Encore: A Reverse Harem Romance

by Lane Hart

  “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 Nine

  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 idea,” 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.

  “No?” Ford asks. “You just like watching me fuck them, right? Do you need me to give you some pointers?”

  “Fuck you, Ford,” Clarke yells, his face turning red in either anger or embarrassment.

  “Why don’t you all calm down?” Tessa asks when she steps into the center of the small room that’s heating up fast. “You’ve been stuck together for a long time. That would make anyone get annoyed. And it’s not just on Ford to make music. You all looked bored on stage, like you didn’t want to be there. Unless you find that passion again, Ford could write the biggest hit of all time, and it would be a flop if you can’t make it work as a group.”

  “How much longer until we get off this fucking bus?” Ford asks.

  I wait for someone else to answer since I have no clue where we are.

  “We should get there tomorrow night if we don’t make too many long stops,” Tessa informs us.

  “Great, then how about we agree to all keep our fucking mouths shut until then?” Davis suggests.

  “Fine,” I say.

  “Done,” Clarke agrees.

  “Does Ben’s snoring count?” Ford asks. “Because that shit is louder than I normally speak.”

  I flip him off for that comment.

  “Okay, I’ll shut up,” Ford concedes.

  “Wow,” Tessa mutters. “It’s gonna be a long, boring two days.”

  She has no idea how damn boring this bus can get. It feels like I’ve spent lifetimes on here. Another day? That shit will pass by like seconds.

  Or at least it would if I could drink myself into unconsciousness. Since I can’t, it may very well seem like an eternity.

  Chapter Ten

  Davis

  None of the fuckers held up their end of our deal to keep their mouths shut for more than thirty minutes. So, for the next twenty hours of our ride, everyone fought for Tessa’s attention, except for me. I wanted to talk to her too, but what the fuck is there for me to say to a beautiful, smart woman like her? It was good enough for me to just hear her voice. It’s so soft and comforting, especially when she sings in the shower.

  I’m not su
re which song I liked better, “Zombies” or her version of “Gone Away” by The Offspring this morning.

  While the woman looks like she’s prim and proper on the outside, she has good taste in music. Guess that’s probably why she went into a career in the music industry.

  Was she a fan of our music before we became an assignment to her? I’d love to know, but I won’t ask.

  Either she would lie to me and say she was, or she’d say no, and I’d feel like shit.

  As soon as the bus stops at Ford’s house in Roanoke, I’m off of there and heading to the equipment bus to grab my guitar and an amp so I can get the fuck out of dodge.

  Tessa calls out my name from the steps, stopping me, like her voice has some sort of power over my body, which includes controlling my feet.

  “What?” I ask.

  “I’ve got an Uber on the way to pick us up, so I can take you to the cabin I found you,” she says sweetly.

  Damn, she’s fast. Guess that’s what she’d been working on when she was typing on her phone and making calls.

  “Just give me the address,” I tell her.

  “Nah, I want to go with you and check it out to make sure you like it.”

  I don’t tell her that right now all I want is a room with four walls and no other people on the other sides.

  “Fine,” I grumble since she’s being nice, doing me a favor. Anything is better than having to go find a hotel room, getting recognized, and having to take selfies and sign shit.

  The groupies all want to fuck Ford. From me, they just occasionally want photos of the scary beast, and I hate taking them.

  When I get my guitar and an amp from one of the stage crew, I go back to the bus where the rest of the guys are getting off. They each stop and inhale deeply when they step on the pavement, taking in the fresh air that’s so familiar.

  I may not have much here in town as far as a family that misses me, but it is good to be back, knowing that we won’t be leaving tomorrow or for the next few months. I’m not sure if I remember what it was like to have a regular life.