by Daisy Allen
“I’m in!” I nod my agreement, excited at the prospect of some time out with my new friends.
“Let’s go! Let the guys pack up. We should get a head start on some shots anyway.”
We file out into the parking lot and the girls loop their arms with mine. They sing a popular song we just heard playing on the radio and it’s not long before I’m joining in. Their perkiness is infectious, and for the first time since accepting this assignment, I feel relaxed.
“Last one there pays for first round!” I scream and make a run for it, the girls hot on my heels.
***
“And then, I open the door and she’s just standing there, buck naked! Waiting...for my fiancé!” Cadence says, emphasizing the words, enjoying our reactions.
“OH MY GOD! So, what did you do?” I ask her, my drink hovering near my mouth, forgotten in the process of hearing the story.
“Well, I felt bad for her, I mean...she’d gotten a spray tan and everything. So I just said, ‘I’m sorry dear, but I’m pretty sure Sebastian only likes real redheads,’ and handed her a Rock Chamber Boys T-shirt and walked off.”
“Tell her how you sent Seb back into the room,” Hailey prompts.
“YOU DID NOT!” I shriek, almost jumping out of my seat.
“What? I knew he wasn’t going to do anything. I was standing right there. I just thought he might like a little peek. I mean, she had abs.” Cadence pats her own stomach then grins. “He’s not going to see any of those on me,” she says matter-of-factly, before downing her drink and slamming it on the table with a victorious look on her face.
The three of us fall against the table laughing again. I feel completely at home with them, like we’ve been friends for decades.
“So, Emily, do you have any groupie stories you want to tell us about? I mean you’ve been a music journalist for what, almost five years now,” Hailey asks, waving to the waiter for another round of shots.
“Well, I don’t kiss and tell.”
The girls instantly look disappointed, their smiles fading, and their shoulders droop. So I continue.
“But I might walk into a public bathroom and see the four members of a certain male Irish band, um, doing some ‘crafts’ and tell.”
The question on Hailey’s face tells me I’m going to have to be more detailed.
Cadence, on the other hand, asks right out, “What? What were they making?”
I feel my eyes lighting up even before I answer. “They were making… a DAISY CHAIN!”
Cadence’s eyes bulge out so far, I feel like I might have to hold out my hands to catch them. “NO. WAY.”
“Wait! What? What’s a daisy chain?” Hailey demands, still confused.
“Just think about it for a moment, honey,” Cadence prompts her, her eyebrows doing a samba on top of her bright eyes.
The moment it finally dawns on Hailey is clear. “HOLY CRAP!!” She laughs so hard, she falls off her seat, her legs flying into the air, boots kicking back and forth in absolute uninhibited laughter.
The boys walk in right at that moment and Hailey struggles to recover from her impersonation of a bug on its back.
“What’s so funny?” Brad asks, smiling at me, and I try not to look away too abruptly.
“Oh, nothing, just some girl talk,” I reply.
“Well, more like boy on boy on boy on boy talk,” Cadence says, raising her eyebrows at Hailey again, who bursts into laughter even louder than before.
“What??” Jez asks, raising his voice to be heard over his boss’s daughter’s cackling.
“It’s nothing, Emily was just telling us of some of her more sordid experiences on the job,” Cadence manages to say before succumbing to the giggles again herself.
I think I catch a look between Jez and Marius, but it’s gone before I can figure out what it was.
“So, what are you guys drinking?” Sebastian asks, pulling Cadence to her feet, before sitting down on her chair and pulling her onto his lap.
“We just finished off a few rounds of shots. You guys ready to catch up?” Hailey asks, finally calming down.
“Er.” Marius shoots another look at Jez that I’m sure I didn’t imagine this time. “I’m not really in the mood for shots.”
The waitress comes over, her notepad ready. “A round of beers then?” Hailey suggests.
“Um, nah. Maybe later. I’m not really in the mood for a drink,” Jez mutters.
“Dude. What’s wrong?” Cadence asks.
“Nothing’s wrong!”
“You just refused alcohol. Twice,” Hailey adds.
Jez narrows his eyes at her, scrunching up his nose. “I’m not an alcoholic!”
Hailey stares at him back, not backing down. “No, you’re just a very social drinker.”
“Well, I’m not today, okay? Give it up,” Jez says, pulling an empty chair from the neighboring table to sit on.
“Okay, fine. What about you, Marius? You wanna take us on?”
“Er, they do iced coffee here, right?” He aims his question on the still-waiting waitress who nods.
“ICED COFFEE?” Cadence yells, her eyebrows in motion again.
“Okay, it’s not funny anymore, guys...what gives?” Hailey asks.
There’s no answer, and each one shirks away from Hailey’s stare when she turns to them.
“Ooohhhh. I know,” Cadence finally speaks up. “They’re scared of Emily.”
“What? Why?”
“They’re scared of what you’re going to write about them,” she explains to me. And of course it all makes sense.
I can’t believe it. “Guys. Seriously?” And I wait for them to deny it.
I turn to Brad, who squirms in his seat. “BRAD!”
He just looks apologetic, but doesn’t even begin to deny it.
“What? I’m not here as a spy, guys, to busybody into the nitty-gritty of your debauched lives!” I shake my head, trying to let it sink in that they see me as an outsider, when the only reason I got this job was because my editor felt I had an in with them. But if all they see me as is a two-bit tabloid reporter, I might as well work for TMZ. It hurt. More than I would’ve expected it to. I feel a prickle behind my eyes and blink furiously trying to get rid of it.
Brad notices, and he moves his chair closer to me. “It’s just… look, we haven’t had the best experience with paps, okay?”
“I’m not a pap,” I say, shocked that I even have to explain that.
“Whatever. Reporters, journalists. It’s been hardly a few months since...” His voice trails off and his eyes shift to Cadence”
“What?” she asks him.
“You know. The pics...and the video,” he says, lowering his voice, referring to the very well-publicized sex video of Cadence when she was younger.
“Dude. I’m cool with Emily.” She winks at me and reaches over and gives my shoulder a little pat.
I smile at her appreciatively. What an amazing woman.
“But...well, we’re...not,” Jez says, frankly.
Wow.
“It’s just...” Marius starts, trying to find a way to explain.
“No. I get it.” And I guess I do.
The group is quiet. Possibly the only time I’ve ever heard such quiet when the guys have been together.
I scan their faces, these faces I first met before they even needed to shave. It hurts, but I know where they’re coming from. But the person they’re afraid of, it’s not me, not my style, and it’s never been my intention to air any dirty laundry or plaster their secrets across the front page.
And as much as they are feeling awkward about admitting their distrust, the hurt is tenfold for me. I thought that our past had meant something. It might’ve taken them a few days to warm to me, but that they would. Breaking the ice was what I expected, not them waiting for me to break their trust.
But I knew what I had to do.
I hadn’t gotten this far in my career without learning a thing or two on how to get the most tight-l
ipped creatures on earth to open up to me.
I had the advantage of four years of high school with these guys, and there’s something they can never refuse.
I stand up, pulling my jacket off, and drape it over Brad’s shoulder.
“Hold my beer. I’m going up for some karaoke.”
Chapter Fourteen
Brad
I can’t have heard her right. “I’m sorry, what?”
She grins at me. “I said I’m going to go sing some karaoke.”
“In God’s name, why?”
She tilts her head as her shoulder lifts in a tiny shrug. “Because you guys are not going to trust me until I prove to you that we’re all in this together. So get your cameras out and turn them on, because I’m going to give you something you can use to blackmail me with for the rest of our natural lives.”
Jez stares at me for a moment, and then breaks out into grin. “Yep, that’ll work!”
I throw him a scowl that he brushes off with a wave of his hand. I’m torn. I don’t want to see her humiliated, but I know that something must be done to get the guys on her side. And this just might be it.
“Er, are you sure about this?” I ask her, as she downs another shot.
“Yes... why?” she asks, knowing perfectly well why.
“Because um...the choir solo debacle of ‘98.”
“What’s the choir solo debacle of ‘98?” Hailey pipes up, sitting straight up in her seat, obviously eager to see the show start.
“Oh my God, I’d forgotten that,” Marius says, the horrified look on his face telling us the memory is now coming back to him.
“Me too!” Sebastian adds.
“Well, I think we’d all repressed it,” I explain, and everyone nods in agreement.
“Hey! What’s the choir solo debacle of ‘98?” Hailey demands again.
“Let’s just say Emily had a choir solo. It was just one or two stanzas, but…well…who knew vomit bags were something you should provide at a school concert?”
“OH MY GOD! Emily!” Hailey turns to Emily, her mouth agape.
Butter slaps me on the arm, hard. “It wasn’t me! It was the cafeteria food!”
I rub my arm where she’d attacked me. “Hey, your singing set it off!”
She sticks her bottom lip out in protest. “Hey, I can’t help it if our classmates were a bunch of ‘You vomit, I vomit’ pact-makers!
Jez stands up, a newly acquired beer in his hand. “So, are we gonna do this or not? Because this dry night thing is fast losing its appeal.”
Butter tugs on the sides of her jacket, psyching herself up. “Yes! I’m going up. Any requests?”
“Yes, I’ve got the perfect song,” Cadence announces up and covers her mouth from us as she mouths something to Emily.
Butter obviously approves, as she skips through the crowd to the karaoke operator and says something to him. The background music immediately cuts out as Emily steps onto the tiny makeshift stage in the corner. I see her grab the microphone and mouth something, her eyes looking upward. Whoever she’s praying to, I hope they make it work for her.
The music starts up, and the crowd roars with laughter even before she starts, and I can’t help but join in. We all know the song. She locks eyes with me for just a moment before she lifts the microphone to her lips and starts to sing. Over the crowd I can just make out the words “walked” and “party” and “yacht” but I don’t need to hear much more.
Her choice of song, “You’re So Vain” by Carly Simon, is clearly meant for me.
She closes her eyes and sings along, the words somehow etched into her memory without her knowing. Her pitchy and flat-as-an-ironing-board voice has somehow caught the attention of the entire bar, who cheer her along as she stumbles over words and shrieks to get at those hard-to-reach notes.
I turn and the guys are holding their sides with laughter, Marius’s camera pointed squarely at the performance on stage, shaking as he tries to stay upright.
I can’t look away for too long and spin around to face the stage again.
Her body bends and sways to the beat, emphasizing words out of time and letting her voice take severe liberties with the melody.
And in this moment, she is undeniably the sexiest woman I’ve ever seen in my life.
Her dark, luscious hair, pulled into a loose ponytail, sways as she rocks her head, revealing the damp nape of her neck, glowing from a thin layer of sweat from her performance. Her lips make love to the microphone, and my cock tightens as the inevitable thought goes to her mouth on me. She’s pure sex.
But it’s more than that.
She’s exquisite in her sheer confidence, even while playing the clown.
My girl, turning her greatest detractors to pawns in the palm of her hand.
“You’re so vain!” she belts into the microphone, raising her finger and pointing it at me, then jabbing it into the direction of my bandmates. The action makes everyone in the bar turn around.
Suddenly it feels like a hundred eyes are trying to focus on us in the dark, scanning our faces, trying to place us. Then a voice screams out, “OHMYGOD, it’s the ROCK CHAMBER BOYS!”
A loud squeal completely drowns out Emily’s singing and Marius jumps up, shouting, “Run!”
Jez and Hailey scramble from the table as Sebastian waits for Cadence to jump off his lap before leading her out of the bar. I yell out to Emily and she drops her microphone and jumps off the stage, getting a head start from the crowd as they appear starstruck. Grabbing her hand as she runs to me, we follow the rest of our group out the door.
The cool night air is a blessing after the humidity of the bar, and the seven us pant as we cross the street, making our way toward the tour buses.
Our drivers jump into their seats as they see us making our way toward them, cranking open the doors. There’s a high-pitched scream and I glance back. There’s a group of about ten to fifteen women running up behind us.
Jez, Marius, Seb and the girls jump onto the closest bus.
“Go, go!” I yell at them and the door closes behind them
I pull Emily onto the girls’ bus with me and as soon as I’m safe inside, there’s a creak and a thud as our driver activates the door to close. We fall forward as the bus lurches to life. The driver steps on the gas, making a sharp turn to the right following the bus in front, and Emily falls on top of me, knocking me onto one of the white leather recliners.
“Ahhh!” Emily squeals, grabbing hold of my arm.
“Sorry, Mr. Windsor, Miss Butter. We’ll get you out of here,” the driver call out to us through his partition.
“Do what you gotta do, Frank!” I reassure him.
I grab Emily tight around the waist and make sure she’s settled on the chair, squeezed in next to me.
“Hold on, he doesn’t get to do this much, so he’s going to make the most of it,” I explain to Emily.
“Do what?”
“Pretend he’s in a car chase.”
As if on cue, the bus, in all its enormity, swerves to the left, and we can just make out the sound of car horn beeping as we whiz by.
“Does this happen often?” Emily asks through gritted teeth, her knuckles white as she tries to hold on.
“What exactly?”
“Being chased by mobs.”
“Ha-ha. No. We’re not Justin Bieber if that’s what you’re wondering.”
She screws up her nose and it’s all I can do not to kiss it. “I dunno, seemed kinda Justin Bieber Fever-y back there.”
“Ah, yeah, just what teenage girls like. Boring ol’ classical music band.”
“Pfft. Come on. You’re hardly that and you know it.”
I just smile at her.
“You’re...you’re really ...well, you’re really something special.” There’s a serious look in her eye, and it seems like it’s important I take her word for it.
“Aw shucks, thanks, Butter,” I say, with a little tinge of sarcasm.
She pinches my arm aga
in. She keeps doing that. “No. I mean, I mean it. You, all of you, you guys really did what you set out to do. You’ve turned it all on its head. This music thing. You took what everyone expects of rock, of pop, hell, even blues and hip-hop, and you took what everyone thought they knew about the violin and the viola and the cello and you just ...made it your own thing. You guys work magic, taking these tired, overplayed songs, and make them into brand-new works of art. A whole new generation of people are going to enjoy Bach and Mozart and AC/DC and James Brown because of you.”
Of course, she would understand. She always did.
“Anyway, it’s, well, it’s really quite remarkable. And all done with those ugly-ass mugs of yours,” she concludes, with a dagger straight to the point.
“I know, right? If at least we were something to look at, you could understand our success,” I sigh, looking mournful.
She goes quiet and the bus is driving a little more smoothly now. It’s dark inside the bus, lit just by the LEDs that line the windows. We can see outside and the sky is clear.
“I’m sorry about what I said,” she suddenly says. “At the press conference.”
I squeeze her hand to know I’ve heard her. “It’s okay.”
“No, it’s not.” She shakes her head to emphasize her the point. “I didn’t mean it.”
“Of course you did.”
“No, I didn’t. I mean, sure, on a totally simplistic level, what you guys do can be described as covers, but I never meant that all you do is just rip off other artists’ music.”
“Ah, that.”
“I don’t know why I said that.” She looks down at her hands and lifts one to nibble at a jagged nail’s edge.
“Sure, you do.”
There’s a brief furrowing of her brow before she asks me, “Why?”
“Because I’m Brad and you’re Butter, and we’re always going to challenge each other, always going to keep each other on our toes. Always going to make sure the other one’s doing the best they can.”
She lets the idea sink in for a moment, and a long sigh empties her lungs. “Am I? Doing the best I can?”
“You tell me, Butter.”
“I don’t know, Brad. I want to be. I want to be doing the best I can, so badly. I see you up there performing, and it’s like, you couldn’t want to be anywhere in the world. Doing anything else in the world.”