Indigo Rain

by Elise Noble

  “I’m with the band.”

  “If I had a dollar for every time I heard that…”

  “No, I really am. I’m Rush’s—” Dammit, I nearly said “Instababe.” “I’m his social media coordinator. He invited me. I even have…” No, I didn’t. “I’ve left my backstage pass in my room.”

  “Sorry. If I let in everyone who told that story, nobody would be able to move from all the women.”

  I was about to give up and slink back to my room when JD pushed past me from behind.

  “Hey, bikini girl! Rush showed me the picture. Whatcha drinking?”

  Thanks, Rush. I did a mental eye-roll, then flashed a Ha! smile at the guard as JD dragged me farther into the room, then wished with all my heart that I’d stayed in bed because—freaking hell—Travis was lying on the sofa right in front of me with a girl’s head in his lap, and I didn’t know where to look. Heat flashed through me from my cheeks, through my thumping heart, and straight between my legs. Fuck. Thank goodness he had his eyes closed or I’d have died on the spot.

  “Are you looking for Rush?” JD asked, acting as if watching his mate get a blowjob was perfectly normal. Probably in his world, it was.

  “Uh, yeah. I guess.”

  JD led me into a bedroom, then stopped dead so I bumped into the back of him. “Looks like he’s busy right now.”

  I stood on tiptoes to look over JD’s shoulder and got an eyeful of Rush’s naked ass, complete with a pair of shiny purple stilettos digging into it. The heels were shaped like daggers. That had to hurt, but Rush didn’t seem to notice. I could barely see the girl, just a glimpse of long black hair as Rush sucked her tonsils out.

  “That’s fine. Perhaps I’ll just have one drink and leave.”

  “Drinks I can do. What do you want? We’ve got… Yeah, we’ve got everything.”

  Including, it seemed, illegal substances. Inside, I was horrified, but I fought to maintain a neutral expression because this was what I’d come to see, wasn’t it? Their world.

  “Hey, JD! Did you get the stuff?”

  JD threw a package in the man’s direction, and I noticed a residue of white powder on the massive dining table.

  “Save some for me.”

  Shit. Zander would have a fit if he found out I was here. What if the police came? I’d never knowingly been to a party where drugs were being taken before, although I guess I shouldn’t have been surprised at their presence since this was Indigo flipping Rain. Perhaps because Rush and Travis had been nice until now—not the lunatics the newspapers made them out to be—I’d let my guard down.

  Seeing the chaos there in the hotel suite, the casual way people snorted cocaine and screwed around, brought home what a sheltered life I’d led. During my time with Mother, I’d attended an all-girls prep school and spent my weekends watching movies and hanging out at the tennis club. When we lived in France, I’d even been junior regional champion, mainly because every time I hit the ball, I pretended it was stepfather number two’s head.

  “Jack and Coke?” JD asked. “Vodka? Beer? Hang on, we’re in England. Gin and tonic?”

  “Anything. I don’t care.”

  “Hey, someone get Instababe a drink!”

  A tumbler full of clear liquid was thrust into my hand. If any day called for alcohol, it was this one.

  “Thanks. Do you know everyone here?”

  “I hardly know anyone.”

  Even so, JD seemed determined to play the congenial host, and I would have been grateful if he hadn’t stopped to snort a line of coke in the middle of it. He wiped the traces away from his nose and carried on as if nothing had happened.

  “This is Zephyr from Vendetta, one of our openers. That guy on the floor over there is Pete, our merchandise guy. And there’s Verity from Styx and Stones, our main support act. Hey, Verity! Where’s Meredith?”

  Verity looked up at me, three inches shorter despite chunky platform boots. Her platinum-blonde hair was tinted blue at the ends, a vivid blue that matched her eyes and the sapphire stud in her nose.

  Now she giggled. “Meredith’s with Rush.”

  So Miss Spiky-Shoes had a name. And now the girl who’d been with Travis walked in too. I recognised her fancy hair clip—a skull set with jewels. From the front, I saw she wasn’t English but Asian. Asian, slim, elegant, and beautiful.

  “Who’s that?” I asked JD.

  “Jae-Lin. She used to have a thing with Travis.”

  Used to? Still did, surely? I was way out of my depth here. No, not just out of my depth. I was freaking drowning.

  A crash from the dining area made everyone spin around. The guy next to JD spun too fast and fell over completely. On the other side of the room, an expensive-looking wooden chair lay splintered on the floor, but nobody nearby seemed to care or even acknowledge that fact. No, two of the guys simply heaved a girl in a skimpy dress off the floor and lifted her onto the table so she could carry on dancing.

  Just another day in the life of everyone’s favourite rock band.

  Apart from Dex. I couldn’t see Dex anywhere. I tried a sip of my drink as I looked around and almost choked. Holy shit. This was basically neat gin. JD had lost interest in me, thankfully, so I sidled in the direction of the door, hunting for somewhere to abandon my glass, but every surface was littered with empty beer bottles and glasses and random pieces of clothing.

  “Leaving so soon?” the door guy asked.

  “Past my bedtime.”

  “Aye, if you keep hanging around this lot, your body clock’ll adjust soon enough.”

  Or not.

  Once again, I ran for the stairs, and once again, I went flying over a pair of denim-clad legs the instant I got through the door. By some miracle, I kept hold of the glass, but I fell on my knees and twenty quid’s worth of Bombay Sapphire flew over the far wall.

  “Shit!”

  “We’ve got to stop meeting like this, blue-eyes.”

  “Why the hell do you keep sitting in stairwells? It’s dangerous.”

  I took a deep breath as I willed myself to stop shaking. At least Travis had his trousers done up now. That was something.

  “Because everyone else takes the elevator and it’s the only place I can get any space.”

  “What about going to bed?”

  “Rush was fucking Meredith next to my bed. I tried lying on the sofa, but I couldn’t get any peace there either.”

  “Yes, I noticed.”

  He raised his barbelled eyebrow at my tone. “I didn’t ask Jae-Lin to do that. She offered.”

  “But you didn’t stop her.”

  “No, I didn’t. You seem shocked.”

  I thought about it. “I guess I am.”

  Silence wrapped around us like steam. Hot, heavy, but oddly comfortable.

  “Why do you all act that way? I’m not judging. Just curious.”

  “Why?” Now it was his turn to think. “Because we can. That’s not really an answer, is it?”

  “No.”

  “How much do you know about the band? You’re not like the other girls who hang around us.”

  “The honest answer? I read your Wikipedia page.”

  He barked out a laugh. “Honesty’s refreshing. Everyone lies in this business. Our manager lied when he told us we got a great record deal. Women lie when they say they like us as people and not as a conquest to brag about to their friends. The crew lie when they say playing the next venue will be easier. The staff at the record label lie when they tell us they care. Nobody cares. You know the only people who didn’t lie?”

  “Who?”

  “The lawyers.”

  “The lawyers?”

  “Yeah, the lawyers, when they told us we’re stuck on this fucking treadmill for two more years if we want to get paid.”

  “But I thought…” What was he talking about? “The press said you got a huge record deal. Twenty-five million dollars.”

  “You don’t understand how the industry works, blue-eyes. We don’t actually g
et twenty-five million dollars up front. We get small milestone payments as long as we keep doing what makes the label happy—performing on stage, releasing albums, doing endless interviews—and at the end of the five-year contract, if I haven’t thrown myself off a building in the meantime, I’ll get one quarter of twenty-five million dollars. Right now, I’d earn more serving up fries.”

  “You’re kidding.”

  His face stayed stony.

  “You’re not kidding?”

  “They own us.”

  “Then what do you live on?”

  “Per diems. Two hundred dollars a day to cover food and expenses, and half of that goes on an apartment I never sleep in and a car I can’t even drive. The label pays for our hotel rooms, which is why we smash them up when Gary’s not around. Because we fucking hate them.” He flashed a grin, but once again, it didn’t reach his eyes. “That and, hey, we’re rock stars.”

  Wow. “I had no idea.”

  I’d always thought of myself as trapped, but now I saw I had more freedom than I’d realised. And more money. Zander never complained if I went shopping, I lived rent-free in a nice apartment, and I owned my car free and clear.

  “Livin’ the dream, blue-eyes.”

  “How did you end up in this situation? With the contract, I mean?”

  “Because we came from nothing, and when you’ve got nothing and someone waves a few thousand dollars in your face, it seems like all the money in the world. When we started off playing the underground club circuit in LA, we had fans, but no cash to live on. The four of us shared this shitty two-bedroom house with no heating and no hot water. Ever lined up at a soup kitchen to eat?”

  “No.”

  “Back in those days, we dreamed of getting signed, and then we ended up in this nightmare. I can’t even walk down the street without getting pulled around by fans or hassled by the paparazzi. If I stop to sign autographs, I’ll never get away. When I tell them to fuck off, that makes the papers.” Travis did that thing with his hand again, lining our fingers up so our palms pressed together. “And that, blue-eyes, is why I sit in stairwells.”

  I believed him. A piece of paper fluttered to the floor, and I picked it up.

  “You’re writing song lyrics?”

  “Yeah. Work never stops. Entertain or die. That’s gonna be the name of our next album if the fuckers at the label don’t make us change it.”

  “Can I see?”

  He shrugged, and I took that to mean yes. Travis’s writing was neater than I thought it would be, tidy lines of printing in blue ink.

  A smile, a kiss, a backward glance,

  But now she’s fallen still.

  In my head I hear her laughter,

  In life I never will.

  Those that spark,

  They go too young.

  Stolen by the devil,

  Now I’m under his gun.

  “Is this about your friend? The girl who died?”

  He nodded. “It’s all I can do. They won’t even let me go to her funeral.”

  “That’s crazy! Why not? Does it clash with a concert?”

  “No, it clashes with an interview. The other guys said they’d handle it, but Gary spouted his usual bullshit about us being a team.”

  “A team he’s clearly not a part of. Hasn’t he heard of the carrot-and-stick approach?”

  “First he beats us with the stick, and if that doesn’t work, he fucks us with the carrot.”

  “What a douche canoe.”

  Travis laughed again. “A douche canoe? You’re so fuckin’ polite.”

  “Compared to you, maybe.”

  This time when Travis smiled, it was genuine, and my heart did a funny little skip that was obviously a delayed reaction to having fallen over him once again. Outside, he was all attitude and leather and confidence and filth, but in the insulated bubble of the stairwell, he turned into the boy-next-door with a little more facial hair.

  But alas, that wasn’t to last, and he got to his feet.

  “Bet I’m boring the shit out of you. I should go throw a TV through a window or something.”

  I took his proffered hand, but as he pulled me up, a scream ripped through the air. A girl’s scream that made every hair on my body stand on end.

  “What was that?” I asked, a tremble in my voice.

  Should we investigate? Or run for our lives down the stairs? Travis’s eyes had gone as wide as mine as he stared towards the door.

  “I don’t know, but we’d better find out.”

  CHAPTER 7 - ALANA

  TRAVIS RAN INTO the corridor, and I followed even though my feet wanted to go in the opposite direction.

  “What’s going on?” he shouted.

  When nobody answered, he carried on into the suite where Jae-Lin lay on the living room floor, clutching her stomach as she tried to suck in air. Her chest heaved as she gasped, and she’d turned deathly white.

  Rush knelt at her side, trying to pull her hands away.

  “I dunno, man. We found her in the bathroom like this.”

  There had to be fifty people in that suite, but every single one of them just stood there, staring.

  “What did she take?” I asked.

  Because she had to have taken something, surely? There were drugs lying on the freaking table, for goodness’ sake! But nobody answered.

  “Rush? What did she take? Anyone? Has someone called an ambulance?”

  I dropped to my knees and checked her pulse, finding it weak and fluttery. Was she overdosing? What did an overdose even look like? In my posh, sheltered little life, the only things I’d ever been in danger of overdosing on were Godiva chocolates and Zac Efron movies.

  “Jae-Lin? Stay with us, okay? We’ll get help.” I locked my gaze onto Rush’s. “Call a damn ambulance!”

  The poor girl jackknifed up, hands clawing at her throat, coughing and wheezing. What was happening?

  “What are the symptoms of an overdose? Anybody?”

  With the number of junkies in that bloody room, somebody had to know.

  “We’ve only got coke and speed, and that’s not either of them,” JD said, his voice soft. Scared.

  “She didn’t take anything,” a girl said. “She was just drinking rum and cola.”

  Then what was wrong with her? She couldn’t speak, but then I noticed her lips were beginning to swell, and that triggered a memory. Every Blackwood employee had to go on a first aid course, and last year when someone called in sick, Zander had arranged for me to take his space so it didn’t get wasted. Something about last-minute cancellations being non-refundable. And one of the things the instructor talked about was anaphylaxis, how it made your airway swell up so you couldn’t breathe.

  “Is she allergic to anything? Nuts? Bee stings?”

  After what seemed like forever, Travis spoke. “Shellfish. She can’t eat shellfish.”

  “Does she carry an EpiPen? Where’s her handbag? Her purse? And has somebody called an ambulance?”

  “I’m calling,” Rush said, phone pressed to his ear.

  JD came to life. “We need to get rid of this shit before the cops get here.”

  Oh, now people started moving. Avoiding being caught with drugs was more important than saving a girl’s life, was it? Until then, I’d been shaking with worry, but as the activity grew frantic, the heat of anger pulsed through my veins.

  “Will somebody find her fucking bag?” I screamed.

  Travis thought I was polite? I begged to differ.

  People murmured to each other. What did the bag look like? Where had she left it? Had she even brought a bag? The crowd began searching, tossing the contents of any unattended handbag on the floor in the hopes it might yield something useful. The toilet flushed in the background.

  “Hey! I think I see a purse under the bed. We need to lift it.”

  Muffled thuds came from the bedroom, and a minute later, someone shoved a tube into my hand. An EpiPen. My fingers trembled as I tried to get the stupid thing ou
t of its protective outer case. How did it work? Thankfully it came with pictures on the side, which was about as much as my brain could handle at that moment. Remove the blue cap. Stab the orange end into her thigh. Hold it in place for three seconds.

  Thirty seconds passed. A minute, but Jae-Lin stopped gasping and started breathing again. Then her tears came, a flood of them, and I wrapped my arms around her, holding her in a seated position until a paramedic finally arrived.

  “What’s wrong with this young lady?” he asked, and now I started crying too, with relief because someone who knew what he was doing was there to take over.

  “I-I-I think s-s-she’s gone into anaphylactic shock.”

  “You used an EpiPen?”

  “Y-y-yes.”

  “Then you did good. We can take it from here. Have you got the EpiPen you used?”

  Somebody handed it over, and I squashed myself into a little ball on the sofa as the ambulance crew loaded Jae-Lin onto a stretcher and took her away. The police arrived and started questioning everyone, and I’d never been more grateful for my safe, boring life with Zander than at that moment. Would he find out about this? I’d take his anger, but I hated the thought of losing his trust. I wasn’t cut out for this. When my mother turned twenty-one, she’d already moved from America to Italy and married her first husband. Me? I still hid behind photos that didn’t include my face and ordered most of my food through an app so I didn’t have to talk to people.

  A cop sat next to me, notepad in hand.

  “Can you talk me through what happened here? I understand you were the person who administered the adrenaline?”

  “I learned about it on a first aid course.”

  “Any idea what set off the allergic reaction?”

  “Sorry. I wasn’t in here when it started.”

  “Oh? Where were you?”

  “In the corridor outside.”

  “Doing what?”

  “Talking.”

  “To who?”

  “Travis.”