But playing with Vaughn reinforced something I had already felt—that our band should play harder and louder. Liz wasn’t having any of it, though, and we had a replacement drummer by Monday, someone who played just like Vicki did. The only drawback was that he was a guy (like Vaughn). Beggars couldn’t be choosers.
I don’t know if I’d expected her addiction and rehab to remain a secret, but they didn’t. It wasn’t long before not only the rock world was abuzz with it, but even mainstream media picked up on the story, reigniting the world’s curiosity about why heroin addiction never truly dies. Just in my short time on the road, I knew it was probably the most heavily abused drug and the number one choice of musicians (strangely enough, pot wasn’t really thought of as a drug). Why? Because it was highly addictive and it made all the pain go away—emotional, physical, imagined. Everything was happy in H-land…until it wasn’t, because it was all a big fucking lie. You can’t turn off your life and expect everything to be okay. There is a time of reckoning—and Vicki’s was now, and that time was called rehab, the last place she wanted to be.
Her mom talked with me a little on the phone, and she felt guilty about her shortcomings as a parent. Was she perfect? No, but what parent was? I knew she loved Vicki and she was going to help her down the path to recovery. That was what was most important. “I blame her dad,” she said. I didn’t even want to ask any questions, but Danielle was going to continue, questions or not. “He was a junkie too, but Vicki always felt like she was cheated, not being able to see him. She’s always been so angry that he left her.” Oh. Poor kid had taken it personally. But there was more to the story. “It’s almost like Vicki’s trying to recreate his death. I just hope the counselors can help her.”
I couldn’t bite my tongue any longer. “Wait. Her dad died of a heroin overdose?”
Her silence confirmed it long before she answered. “Kyle, most people addicted to heroin overdose at least once. We just have to pray she lives.”
Chilling and haunting…and what was worse was that I couldn’t do a damn thing about it.
* * *
We couldn’t quite figure out when Barbie had made the time to break away for a photo shoot, but the damn girl turned up in a bikini on the cover of some nudie magazine in late August. Inside, though, she was their “rockin’” centerfold—and she was wearing nothing but a smile. She held a microphone in her hand, and don’t think for a second she didn’t use that prop phallically and suggestively.
How the fuck were we supposed to be taken seriously when all she wanted to do was be worshipped as a sex object?
Don’t get me wrong—I knew already that sex sold shit, and I also knew that showing a lot of skin from time to time worked. I knew that some of our sexiest songs were our most popular. But there was no subtlety to Barbie’s tactics. She was throwing herself out there, leaving no surprises.
It wasn’t long before our Facebook and Twitter pages were blowing up, asking for nudie pictures of all the band members. We made the agreement—Liz and I, that is—to ignore anything having to do with Barbie’s nakedness. She hadn’t consulted us about it, and we weren’t going to comment.
Once more, I could have killed her.
Vicki rejoined the tour mid-October, healthy and reinvigorated, and she asked if she could be with one of us all the time, just to make sure she stayed on the straight and narrow. So Liz and I agreed that we would trade party nights—when she would party, I would stay at the hotel with Vicki and then the next night, Liz and I would trade places.
So we ended that tour as part-time babysitters. And, frankly, I was sick of my entire band and glad we had some time off. Mollie had talked about a European leg but decided not to move forward with plans when Vicki had wound up in rehab. Besides, an entire year on tour was more than enough, and I was as sick of the songs as I was my bandmates.
I needed some serious time off if the Vagabonds were to survive—and I suspected we all felt the same damn way.
“Back to the Cave” ~ Lita Ford
Chapter Forty-three
MY FIRST MONTH off tour sucked. Yeah, it was great being away from my bandmates, but I was going through some kind of withdrawal from something. God, and to think I’d been worried about Vicki. I needed to check myself. So I slept most of that time—spending a day or two with my parents—and I ate way too much, satisfying some itch I couldn’t quite scratch.
And then there was CJ. Oh, sweet CJ. Death Crunch was almost done recording their third album when I was detoxing my body, and I considered calling and texting him but resisted the urge every time the thought popped into my head. Why? Because I knew nothing had changed.
Still…I loved the guy. I wanted the guy. Badly.
One day I got a text from him. Still mad at me?
God, no. No. There was no way I could still be mad at CJ, especially since I’d been a slut on tour myself. Jesus. I could barely remember all the sex I’d had this go-round, but the most spectacular had probably been what was the worst night on tour—when Vicki had been in ICU the night she’d overdosed, but Liz and I had thanked Vaughn for covering for our drummer by having a threesome.
Shit. I could barely remember it. The only thing that was vivid in my mind was how thick his cock had been and so I’d nearly choked on the damn thing.
Yeah. I couldn’t hold CJ in judgment…and I definitely couldn’t be pissed. So, smiling, I picked up my phone and typed, Whatever made you think I was mad at you? I followed it up with a winky face emoticon.
And then my phone rang. We talked shop for a while, and the whole time I was thinking how good it was to talk to him. He just felt right. It wasn’t long before he said, “According to my calendar, you’ll be twenty-one in a few weeks. Wanna hit some bars?”
I had other ideas. “Actually, I’d rather hit a liquor store and find some artistic ways to use alcohol. Naked.”
He cleared his throat. “Were you planning to do that alone or do you need a partner?”
I started laughing. My heart wanted to tell him how much I’d missed him, how sorry I was that I’d been a bitch to him, but part of me was still miffed, upset that I wasn’t enough, would probably never be enough. And so that stopped me from telling him my true feelings. “I could do it alone…but I think it’d be a lot more fun with you along.”
We both laughed and then it got quiet. Finally, he said, “You sure you wanna wait till your birthday?”
I smiled. “For company or for the drink?”
And so that night CJ and I had frenetic sex, and I could tell that he’d missed me as much as I’d missed him. It was like we hadn’t been apart, because it became much like the year before when we’d dated steadily. The Vagabonds were taking an entire month off, and so I continued sleeping a lot to shake off the vestiges of mild chemical dependency.
CJ and I never said anything about our real feelings, and I often wondered if he cared at all or if I was just a convenient lay.
I wasn’t going to ask. Nor did I do any further self-examination, wondering why I had so quickly run back to him without giving it much thought.
And, by God, I wasn’t going to let him know how I really felt, because I usually figured it was one-sided. How could he continue fucking so many other women if he loved me?
He couldn’t. It didn’t matter that I was doing the same damn thing, and that thought never entered my mind, because I fucked around on tour only because he was doing the same thing. I would have been faithful if I’d known he was making an effort. So, sure, he and I talked about touring and we talked about what our bands were doing, but we didn’t talk about that shit when we were fucking, and we no longer discussed our sex lives on tour.
One morning, I woke up entangled in his arms and rolled over, resting my head on his chest. I was thinking how nice it would be to wake up like this every morning…to begin my day next to this man. He had begun to be everything good in the world to me—but I couldn’t have him all the time. Only now, only when I was with him was when he was
mine—and I’d have to accept that fact.
So, after feeling loved and warm, I felt sad and lonely. I rolled over and looked at him. He was still asleep, his breathing soft and shallow, his eyes closed, his face relaxed. His hair was longer now than it had been when we first met, almost as long as mine, and he’d let his facial hair grow out a bit. He had the beginnings of a mustache and goatee, but he’d been shaving the rest of his face. It made him look older, which, I suppose, he was. He was twenty-five now—fully a man—but sometimes I still saw him in my mind as younger, as he’d looked when I’d first met him. He had more tattoos now too, almost a full sleeve on his right arm. I continued drinking in details, lost in thought, stroking that colorful arm, when I heard him mutter, “What the hell time is it?”
I smiled. “I have no idea.” I stretched so I could see over his shoulder the clock on the nightstand. “Seven-thirty.”
“What the hell are you doing up at this ungodly hour?”
“Tormenting you.”
His lips brushed my forehead. “Care if I sleep some more?”
“No, that’s fine.” But I considered doing my usual—bailing before breakfast. And why not? Because it was either that—go home to the woman who was becoming my most trusted friend and my guitar—or stay here next to the man I loved to the depths of my soul…next to him but still lonely as hell.
* * *
Liz and I started writing the Vagabonds’ third album. She hadn’t written as much on the road this last time, and I suspected it was because she had been exploring her sexual appetites. Liz had grown up so tight, so boxed in, so reserved that she had no idea how to be free…but she was learning.
That was good, because it forced me to be creative—and I’d had no fucking idea I had so much to say. Liz and I collaborated on a couple of things but then agreed to work on our own songs and come together a week later. I locked myself in my room and poured all my emotions into, first, my guitar, and then I wrote words that felt like they matched the riffs I’d put together.
I didn’t know if they were any good, though. So when Liz and I got back together in the kitchen a week later, our guitars plugged into tiny practice amps, she started first. Holy. Shit. The woman’s writing had matured more than I ever would have expected. Her rhythms were rich and complicated, and I couldn’t wait to wrap my fingers around them—which reminded me. We hadn’t talked about if we wanted to hire a new bassist, because if I were Liz, no fucking way would I give those riffs over to me. Those were the most personal things she’d ever written. But, while they were amazing musically, they were also even softer than anything else she’d ever composed. I wondered what she was going to think about my bad ass stuff—because even the melancholy songs I’d written were harder than her heaviest tune.
I still couldn’t wait to hear the songs with drums and bass.
So I played my first song. I didn’t know what to think about mine, except that I loved them, because they were part of me…but it turned out that Liz was as impressed with my songs as I had been with hers. “Damn, woman. Our first two albums are like soda pop. This new shit is like fine wine.”
“My thoughts exactly.” So even though our songs were going to sound weird next to each other on our album, we decided we had to move forward. I had a brief flash of Peter—because he would have hated our new music. He’d sold us to the world as underage children—“teen phenoms” who hinted at what was taboo because we were just a little sexy. He would have hated how we’d grown, but I relished it. Hearing what both of us had composed made me feel like we were real. We’d matured. We weren’t just a flash in the pan hanging on for dear life and faking it. We were here to stay.
Chapter Forty-four
SO IT CAME time to practice our new music, but getting Vicki and Barbie to join us proved next to impossible. Barbie had moved out of Liz’s house as soon as we’d returned to Colorado, and at first she’d said it was because she wanted a little space. We figured out otherwise when we saw that she was “in a relationship” on Facebook with some guy who lived in Monument.
But we not only had to practice—we also had to discuss our future. Did we hire a new bassist or not? I thought Liz was amazing with the bass, but I didn’t know what she wanted to do—and, being a band, it wasn’t just her decision. We all had some say in the matter. I hoped we could do whatever she wished, but we had to do what was for the best of the band. Problem was we couldn’t figure that out if the band would never get together to discuss anything.
And we had some amazing new songs. Liz and I were excited to share it, but every time we’d suggest several days, what worked for one of the women wouldn’t work for the other. One afternoon, we’d been playing—Liz had me practicing the guitar to two of her songs while she played bass alongside—and she picked up the phone when we were at a natural breaking point. “Barbie, can you meet tomorrow?” She paused and I could see frustration in her eyes. “What about Thursday?” She was gritting her teeth. “Look, if you can’t make it Thursday, you’re out of the band. I’m tired of this bullshit.” She got ready to hang up. “One o’clock.” She was on the warpath then, and I knew she was then hanging up her phone to immediately dial Vicki’s number. “Vicki, we’ve got to meet, and we’ve got to practice. I expect to see you on Thursday at one o’clock here at my place…if you intend to keep playing with the Vagabonds.” I could hear that Vicki said something, but I couldn’t tell what. Liz hung up after a few moments and then she asked, “Was that too harsh?”
I shrugged. “Maybe. But it was necessary. Continually blowing us off is unprofessional.” Liz still had a worried look on her face. “They weren’t responding to niceness.” She nodded, realizing she couldn’t blame herself for our bandmates’ unwillingness to work.
I figured I knew what both their problems were, and I was sure that, deep down, Liz did too. Barbie loved being onstage; she loved the adoration of our fans; she loved going online and feeling that love…but she didn’t like the mundane part of the job—where we perfected a song before recording. Again, Peter had spoiled her. Our practices and recording under him had been unorthodox—short, sweet, to the point, and raw as hell. We had the money and we had the time now, and we wanted as perfect as possible. That meant rehearsals—lots of them—and that meant more time in the studio: both things which she hated. Well, no one ever said you’d love every aspect of your job. She’d just have to suck it up. We needed her.
Vicki? Well…I suspected her problem was more unintentional. She and I didn’t keep in touch like we used to, but the girl had lots of problems, and they revolved around addiction. I could have been wrong, but I figured Vicki was either doing drugs again or involved in some sort of rehab. Both made work and obligations of any kind harder. Vicki was dealing with emotional struggles, something that was understandable, but Barbie had an attitude problem the size of Texas—and I know I was growing weary of it, but I suspected Liz had also finally had enough.
Thursday rolled around and seeing Vicki confirmed my suspicions. She looked like shit. I wondered if she was still living with her mom and, if so, how the woman could let Vicki kill herself like this—but I knew. We hadn’t been able to do much for her either. I hugged her, afraid to pull her too close, but I couldn’t say anything. She looked like a skeleton—pale and nothing but bones.
Barbie was late. As usual. But at least she showed up.
After Liz, the consummate hostess, brought them both a glass of iced tea, she said we needed to talk before sharing the music we wanted them to learn. I hadn’t known at the time, but Liz was prepared—and she had an agenda. “This is no time to rest on our laurels, ladies. When’s the last time you listened to the radio?” I almost laughed because I knew neither of them did; and, if they did, it was internet radio. I listened to radio regularly and so did Liz—we heard new bands that way, although there were other ways to do find them. For me, it had been a matter of being on the road with my family for so long, and so the radio was more a staple to me than television or t
he internet when it came to music. YouTube suggestions wouldn’t cut it when you could instead hear something at random, something that wasn’t necessarily similar at all to something you liked, but it wound up being something different that you enjoyed nonetheless.
Both women shrugged and shook their heads, so Liz continued. “There are hundreds of bands competing for airtime, lots of which are better than we are. And there are plenty that suck too, but guess what? They’re getting played and they’re getting bought. Why? Because they deliver. Now is our most crucial time. We’ve weathered our debut and the dreaded sophomore release. The third is where we really show our shit—and Kyle and I have written some amazing stuff that’s going to push us to the next level. It’s time for people to start taking us seriously, not as just a bunch of girls who look cute and happen to play some instruments in a competent fashion.
“It’s time to get serious.”
“We are serious, Liz.” Barbie, of all people, shouldn’t have said that.
“No, you’re not, Barbie. If you were serious, you wouldn’t be late all the time…and I wouldn’t have had to threaten you to get your ass here.” Barbie rolled her eyes and sneered but kept her mouth shut. “I was serious when I said you’d both be out of the band if you couldn’t commit.”
Vicki’s eyes grew wide. “No. You can do that to me. This band is my life. I’m sorry. I’ll do whatever you need, just—”
Liz shook her head. “You’re still in the band, Vicki. That’s why you’re still here.”
Our friend had already started crying, though, just being told that she was near the chopping block. Barbie jutted out her chin in defiance. “Whatever. You guys are nothing without me.”
On the Road: (Vagabonds Book 2) (New Adult Rock Star Romance) Page 27
