by Lane Hart
“Because the way you treated that woman earlier tonight was disgusting,” I reply honestly. “And quite frankly, your arrogance isn’t attractive.”
“Disgusting?” he repeats with his brow furrowed. “She came backstage and practically begged me to let her suck my dick.”
“And you had her do it in a room full of people, including me. You could’ve found someplace private if you were going to use her mouth. Instead, you let everyone see her on her knees for you. I bet you don’t even know her name.”
“Why is it my fault if groupies want to give it up to me?” he asks, holding his arms out to his side.
“Because your fame has gone to your head and made you an asshole who takes advantage of the fans.” Oh, my God. I can’t believe I snapped at him, but he’s so…infuriating.
“That’s just the rock and roll lifestyle, babe,” Ford replies, unoffended by my harshness.
“Maybe if you spent less time getting off and more time working on songs, you wouldn’t be about to blow millions of dollars in a record deal that other people would kill to have.”
Chapter 8
Ford
Fuck me.
Since we started touring, I don’t think any woman has ever turned me down. And not a soul has ever told me I’m disgusting before Tessa’s speech.
I thought for sure she wanted me. Hell, I know she does by the way she was looking at me like she was starving and would do anything for a bite of me.
But wanting me isn’t enough reason for Tessa to cave. I know she was serious when she said she wouldn’t ever be with me after seeing the girl giving me a blowjob backstage.
Her words were brutal and a goddamn wake-up call. While I’ve never given a shit what other people think, for some reason, I care about Tessa’s opinion of me being an uncaring playboy.
And I hate being told no.
That doesn’t mean I’ll give up trying to get Tessa in my bed. I’ll just have to figure out a way to convince her to change her mind. Which means, I need to give up the groupies from now on. Sure, it’ll suck not to have them at my beck and call, but in order to convince Tessa that there’s more to me, it’s a necessary step.
Why would I do that for her, a woman I just met hours ago?
Because, deep down, I know she’s right. Going through women the way I’ve been doing isn’t healthy. I hate the way I feel after I get off with one of the random girls who come backstage. Tessa thinks I use the women, but the truth is, after they walk away, I’m the one who is left feeling like I was taken advantage of. The only reason the groupies want me is because I’m the lead singer of a once outrageously popular band. That, and my looks are all they know about me when they drop their panties or get on their knees.
I may enjoy myself while we’re fucking, but afterward, there’s just the emptiness. The women don’t care about me on more than a superficial level and they never will. They see dollar signs or bragging rights. Most don’t even wait until they’re out the door to pull out their phones and tell everyone they know that they were just with Ford Donohue, the lead singer of Malus.
More women come to take their place, and I let them, because those few seconds of pleasure stops the chaos in my mind temporarily. In that moment, I feel great, wanted, adored, worshipped. And then it’s over, and I’m back to being alone and on the brink of being a has-been musician with a few hits years ago that I can’t replicate.
“I’m sorry,” Tessa says, after several minutes of silence pass between us. “I shouldn't have said those things.”
I quickly realize that she’s apologizing for what she said, but she’s not saying that her words aren’t true.
“No, you’re right,” I tell her. “I am disgusting. Felt that way for a while, but just didn’t want to admit it to myself.”
“Ford, no, that’s not…”
“True?” I provide for her. “It is. And you know what? I’m done with the groupies. Not just because the tour is over, but because I don’t want to keep treating women that way or letting myself get used by them.”
“Sure,” Tessa says, crossing her arms over her chest in a way that says she’s not buying my words.
“I am. Watch and see,” I tell her. “And I’ll lay off of hitting on you too. I crossed a line I shouldn’t have.” For now, I leave off.
“Good,” she says with a nod.
“But I do think it would be best for Ben and me if you stayed near us.”
“Maybe,” she replies. “I’ll talk to him in the morning after he sleeps off his hangover.”
“Great,” I tell her. “Do you want to take one of the bunks or the sofa tonight?”
“Uh, I’ll sleep on the sofa,” she decides. “When Clarke gets out of the shower, I’ll go change.”
“Okay. Sleep well,” I tell her before I crawl up into the bunk over Ben. Sure, the snoring is louder on this side, but at least when I hear it, I know that he’s still breathing. His drinking has been getting worse, but who was I to tell him to stop when I have my own vices? Now I think that, I should’ve tried harder before tonight when he went on stage, drunk as fuck.
There’s a lot to think about tonight as I lie flat on my back, looking up at the ceiling that’s about two feet above my head.
I definitely won’t miss the bunks when we get home. It’ll be awesome to sleep in a king-sized bed with plenty of room to stretch out. My own bathroom that I don’t have to share with anyone will be great too.
It’s hard to believe that we’ve been on the road for most of the last five years.
I remember when the four of us first walked onto this bus and thought it was enormous. Our expectations were low back then, when all we cared about was playing our music in front of the fans.
It would be great to get back to that same feeling, but for a while now I’ve realized that’s impossible. The four of us are different and continue to grow apart. Soon, we won’t be making music together, and I’ll think back to all the times I bitched about being on the road constantly with my friends and wish we had done things differently.
Tessa has the best of intentions, but the poor girl is delusional if she thinks she can save us from our own self-destruction.
…
I wake up from a deep sleep that was more peaceful than most nights. Before my eyes open, I hear the strangest sounds coming from the bus’s bathroom.
“What the hell is that?” I ask aloud.
“Shh,” someone shushes me from down below.
Leaning my head over the edge of the bunk to look down at Ben, who is awake and lying on his side, I say, “Is that Tessa…singing?”
“Is that her name? I couldn’t remember it. Who is she again?” Ben asks.
Clarke sticks his head out of the bottom bunk across from us and says, “Both of you, shut up so I can hear.”
Rolling back into bed, I close my eyes and strain my ears to try and listen closer over the hum of the bus’s engine. It’s so soft that it takes a few seconds for me to recognize the lyrics of the old classic, “Zombie” by The Cranberries. Before we wrote our own songs, the guys and I used to cover it in bars. We never had a female vocalist, and I certainly couldn’t pull off the notes as well as the legendary Dolores O’Riordan, but the fans always loved it.
The song is one that stays with you after you hear it, playing on repeat like a broken record. So even after Tessa’s voice fades away, I still find myself humming it. Below me, Ben joins in and even Clarke hums along until we get to the chorus. That’s when I can’t keep the powerful lyrics inside any longer and sing them aloud.
I’m on the second verse when I hear the bathroom door open.
The guys join me in the chorus, Ben and Clarke’s deep bass balancing out my baritone.
“Wow,” Tessa says after the last note. “So I guess I wasn’t as quiet as I thought I was.”
Hanging my head over the edge of the bed, I look down at her standing in a different suit from yesterday, a gray one, with her blonde hair still wet and pulled
back at her neck. “You have a beautiful voice too,” I tell her.
“Oh, whatever,” she says with an eye roll. “Everyone sounds good with the bathroom acoustics.”
“You hit the notes,” I point out.
“I was in chorus in high school. What a dork, right?” she asks.
“We could’ve used a dork like you when we were hitting up the local bars. Everyone loves rock bands with female singers.”
“If I tried to sing onstage like you do, I’d get booed off,” she replies.
The bedroom door suddenly opens, cutting off our conversation, as Davis comes shuffling out looking about as happy as a hungry grizzly bear waking up from his winter hibernation. He glares at all of us like usual but then, when he turns his back to us to go into the bathroom, I hear his rumbling hum of “Zombie,” making me grin. Guess even the big guy can’t resist.
“So,” Tessa says, once Davis disappears, “since you guys were nice enough to let me tag along on the bus, I thought I could cook you some breakfast.”
“Great, I’m starving,” Ben tells her from his bed.
“You passed out last night before I could ask this, but where’s your stash?” she asks him.
“Ugh,” he mutters. After several seconds, he finally exhales heavily and says, “The cabinet above the microwave.”
“Is that the only place?” she asks.
“There’s a flask in my coat pocket.”
“And?” she prompts.
“Maybe a bottle under the bathroom sink.”
“Jesus Christ, Ben,” I grumble.
“What about you?” Tessa asks, when she looks up at me. “Any packs of cigarettes hiding around here?”
“Nope,” I answer quickly.
Narrowing her eyes at me, she says, “You’re lying, but don’t worry, I’ll find them.”
She’s right, but the thing is, I won’t let myself smoke a single one, no matter how much I crave the nicotine. It’s not worth the buzz if it means earning Tessa’s disapproval when she smells the smoke on me.
Chapter 9
Ben
My hands start trembling while I’m in the shower, scrubbing my head. By the time I get out and brush my teeth, my throat is burning like a wildfire, needing more of the liquid it’s so used to.
I can’t remember the last morning before this one that I woke up and didn’t immediately take a swig. That’s bad, right? I don’t know why I didn’t realize it before, but now I see just how much the booze took over my life.
Giving it up isn’t going to be easy. At least we’ll be off the road soon, since my biggest trigger was getting wasted right after we perform. Sure, I would drink before we would go onstage, but afterward was a whole other ballgame. It’s when I would reward myself for making it through the performance and let myself drink until I couldn’t stand up.
In the mornings, I would usually find myself on the bus, having no clue how I got on it but figuring Clarke or Davis dragged my ass on, so I wouldn’t get left.
If I can’t have a drink, then I’m going to shove food down my throat to try and stop the ache. It smells like Tessa was able to cook up some bacon after we stopped for her to run into a store to pick up a few groceries. I smell coffee too, which could be my new best friend.
As soon as I’m dressed in a pair of jeans and ratty, black AC/DC tee, I walk out into the living room area of the bus where the sofas are lined up across from the kitchen.
“Hungry?” Tessa asks when she sees me. She holds out a plate of bacon to me, and I snatch up a piece to put it in my mouth.
“Damn,” I moan as I chew. “That’s good. Give me about five more pieces, a pile of eggs, and ooh, are those biscuits?” I ask, when I spot them cooling on a rack on the oven. “Let me get two.”
“Slow your roll, man,” Clarke says from the sofa. “You’ve got to be able to fit out the door to get off the bus.”
Flipping him off, I tell him, “If I can’t have a drink for breakfast, I have to fill my stomach with something.”
“Yeah, and your stomach will show it too soon if you keep eating like that,” he jokes.
“When we’re back home, I’ll start running,” I promise. I could totally see myself turning into a couch potato fat ass during our time off.
“I’ll run with you,” Tessa offers. “I usually do about three miles every morning. That work for you?”
“Jesus Christ, woman. Do you want me to die?” I ask. “Let’s start with one mile and go from there.”
“Okay,” she agrees with a smile.
“Yo, Ben,” Ford says, when he comes over to throw his plate away in the trash. “What do you think of staying with me at my parents’ old house? Tessa can crash with us to keep us away from our vices.”
“Yeah, that sounds good,” I agree, since I barely trust myself to go to the restroom right now without swallowing all of the mouthwash.
“See, Ben’s good with it, so does that mean you’ll stay with us?” Ford asks from beside Tessa. “There are four bedrooms, FYI.”
“We can give it a try,” she agrees before she quickly turns around and starts washing dishes.
“Awesome.”
“Clarke, what are you and Davis gonna do?” I ask.
“I’ll stay with my parents. At least, at first,” Clarke answers. “If I don’t, they’ll bitch.”
“Yeah, I bet,” I say, although I wouldn’t know, since my parents will probably be too wasted even to care that I’m back in town. Guess the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree.
“Davis?” I ask, since he doesn’t respond, ignoring me to watch whatever is on the small television mounted above the kitchen.
“Oh, I’m gonna find Davis a nice, quiet place for him to get away for a while,” Tessa answers for him.
“Yeah, that sounds about right,” I agree with a grin, knowing that the big guy is losing his cool more and more often. We need to get away from each other, or we’ll go crazy. At least Ford’s house is big enough that I won’t have to see him every second of the day, and we’ll have our own bathrooms.
“I may have to camp out with you all if Tessa keeps cooking like this,” Clarke says when he gets up and dumps his plate.
While I can handle sharing space with Ford, for whatever reason, I’d rather not have Clarke crowding us. I’ll be sure to talk to Ford later and make sure he feels the same, that two of us in his house with Tessa is plenty.
And yeah, maybe I don’t want anyone else stealing her time from me. She’s a beautiful woman, and while I’ll be suffering through hell coming off the booze, at least I’ll have her around to take my mind off that shit.
“Why don’t you take a load off and I’ll wash up the dishes after I eat,” I tell Tessa, since she went to all the trouble to cook for us. We usually live off fast food and vending machines on the road, so it’s good to actually have a warm meal.
“Are you sure? I don’t mind since I’m bumming a ride,” she tells me.
“I’m sure. Sit your ass down.”
“Okay,” she agrees. “But only if you all tell me some stories about when you were growing up together, before you became rock stars.”
“Not much to tell,” I reply with a chuckle. “We screwed off in Ford’s parents’ garage when we weren’t in school, crushed on girls who didn’t know we existed, and pretty much idolized all the bands that got played on the radio.”
“It must have been fun when you first started getting gigs,” she says as she dries off her hands on a towel and turns around to rest her back on the counter.
“Yeah, it was,” I agree. “We were all nervous as fuck, especially Clarke.” He flips me off before I go on. “But being on the stage the first time was…euphoric. Even though there were only about a dozen people in the crowd, it was an incredible feeling knowing that someone was listening to us make music together.”
“That does sounds amazing,” Tessa replies.
“When did we lose that feeling?” I ask the guys.
“No fucking i
dea,” Ford mutters.
“I dunno, man,” Clarke says with a shrug of his shoulders. “But damn, I miss it.”
“Me too,” I tell them.
“When we sold out,” Davis grumbles.
“Man, you know we couldn’t make a living on playing in bars for free beer,” Clarke tells him.
“We shouldn’t have agreed to be the record label’s bitches either,” Davis argues, with a glare at Tessa.
“Your contract was pretty standard,” Tessa replies in the label’s defense. “The reason you guys are burnt out is because you didn’t produce anything new. If you had, you would have been able to renegotiate your deal, take some time off, and then start a new tour. Since you didn’t do that, you were stuck riding out the old contract with those same songs.”
“If we make another album, I won’t agree to sign my life away for it again,” Davis states.
“Like we’re really gonna make another one in months when we’ve been stagnant for years,” Ford says.
“I told you to stop being so goddamn pessimistic!” Clarke barks at Ford. “With that attitude, we won’t be able to do shit at home but twiddle our thumbs.”
“I want to play,” I state. “But it’s not up to me; it’s up to the writers. Get your shit together,” I tell Ford, since he’s all but given up on coming up with new material.
“Fuck you, Ben,” Ford replies. “How would you feel if our entire future rested on your shoulders?”
“I’d feel like I better get my ass in gear or I’d let a lot of people down,” I tell him.
“Yeah, well, it doesn’t work that way. I can’t just make the words come to me.”
“You could try a little harder,” Clarke says. “I bet you can’t go two days without banging some chick we meet at a rest stop or gas station.”
“Are you jealous, Clarke?” Ford asks, with his signature smirk. “All you have to do is ask, and I’d share.”
“I don’t want your sloppy seconds. Never have, never will,” Clarke replies with a scowl.
