I had barely even seen Leah, though. Once, I had caught a glimpse of her going into her place as I came back from a band practice, but either she hadn’t heard me honk the horn or… Well, she hadn’t turned around, anyway.
There was a part of me that wanted to go over there and knock on her door. Maybe bring her pizza this time and see if it led to the same results. My eyes kept scanning the crowds at our concerts, looking for her. Our groupies’ flirtations held even less appeal to me now.
It wasn’t just about the sex, though, although that had been mind-blowing. Things were getting even more intolerable with Mark and Carter, and it was getting to the point where I just needed to talk to someone about all of it. Anyone.
Except for Luke. He had always been the one I talked to about things like that, but he had started withdrawing more and more lately, stewing in his frustrations on his own. I knew that we had to come up with some sort of solution soon or else the whole band was going to implode, but I had no idea what to do. I needed someone who could be objective.
For some reason, Leah stood out as the person I would like to talk to about it. Maybe it was just the fact that I could tell she would have a different perspective than anyone else I knew, or maybe it was the fact since we’d slept together, I couldn’t help but feel a certain closeness to her, even though that was a dangerous thought.
Maybe it was the fact that she was so career-driven, herself, and I knew that she would help me see what I wanted more clearly.
In any case, she didn’t seem to want to have anything to do with me, and I wasn’t sure how to push her for something more. I could tell she had felt awkward after we’d slept together. Sure, she’d had something to do that night, but I could tell it had been more than that.
I wished I could talk to her about it. I would have felt awkward about pounding on her door and demanding some sort of explanation, though. Besides, Carter was over at my place more often than not lately, and I would have felt like a heel turning my back on him so I could focus on what was going on with Leah. After all, we had just had a one-night stand. It wasn’t like she and I were in a long-term relationship.
Carter’s drinking was really starting to concern me, but not just because it affected the band. He was my friend, more than just a bandmate. I was worried about him.
At first, I had figured that I would go out with him, keep an eye on him and see if I could get him to stop drinking before he got too wasted. That hadn’t worked, though. Carter had an explosive temper once he started drinking, and he resented me stopping him from either partying or hooking up with girls.
So afterward, it was mostly trying to steer him toward some of our less-wasted groupies and then convince him to head home at a reasonable hour. Sometimes it worked, sometimes it didn’t. And most times, it ended with him showing up on my doorstep hungover (or still drunk) and passing out on my couch.
There was part of me that wanted to just shake him and tell him to shape up. To remind him that our futures were at stake here. Or maybe to even go so far as to toss him in my trunk and drop his ass off at rehab.
I didn’t know how to have that conversation, though. Carter was spiraling out of control, but he seemed to be refusing all help at the same time.
That night, we were due to go on in about forty-five minutes. I was setting up my kit on the stage while watching Carter out of the corner of my eye. I grimaced as I watched him laugh and sling an arm around a woman, then take a shot of tequila. He had barely set the glass back on the bar before the bartender was pouring him another one.
Just then, Mark rolled up, a girl on his arm. “Hey, Jayson, you going to go do something to handle Carter before he’s too drunk to play?” he asked. I couldn’t tell if he was taunting me or actually asking me to go handle Carter. My hands clenched into fists, and I was just about to retort that maybe Mark should do something himself when he turned his back on me and headed toward the bar with the girl trailing behind.
Probably just as well. All Mark was likely to do would be to exacerbate the situation. Hell, he’d probably start buying Carter more shots. That was the last thing we needed at the moment.
“Need any help with anything? Or anyone?” I looked over, half hoping to see Leah standing there, even though I realized belatedly that it wasn’t her voice who had spoken to me.
Instead, it was Trixie standing there. Because of course it was. She was there at almost all of our shows, and even though she was clearly trying to sleep her way through everyone in the band, she seemed pretty intelligent as well. If anyone was going to realize how things really were going for the band, it was her. She knew us at least as well as anyone did.
Somehow, that pissed me off even more, though. I didn’t want our band to be known for infighting. I didn’t want our struggles to be obvious to outsiders. Why did Mark and Carter not seem to care at all about our image? Why didn’t they seem to care about the band?
I just shook my head at her. “Don’t worry about it,” I told her.
“Yeah, okay,” she said, grinning at me. “I’m sure you can handle it, can’t you? You’re always so good with the two of them.”
I bristled slightly. The last thing I needed right now was her flirting with me.
I didn’t want to examine why that thought bothered me so much. But as my eyes scanned the gathering crowd, I knew I wasn’t searching for my bandmates’ faces.
“Just enjoy the show,” I told her brusquely, finishing up on the stage. I headed toward the bar. Mark wasn’t even talking to Carter, and I wasn’t sure if that was a blessing or a curse as Carter was getting drunker by the minute. Mark, on the other hand, was flirting with the blonde bartender.
I huffed angrily. It was nearly time for soundcheck, and here they were. We were never going to get anywhere like this. But then again, with the way things had been going lately, they probably wouldn’t care if our vocals were mute, our guitars out of tune, or anything else we were meant to check prior to the start of the show.
Hell, if I hadn’t even gotten Carter’s guitar out of its case prior to the show, I doubted that he would have noticed. What the fuck was going on with us?
I grabbed Mark first, my hand landing heavily on his shoulder. “Get Carter, find Luke, and get ready for soundcheck,” I said in a clipped tone.
Mark looked for a moment like he wanted to protest, but then he pasted a cocky grin on his face and turned to the bartender. “Guess it’s showtime,” he said, winking at her as he slipped off his stool and went over to where Carter was listing to one side.
I leaned over toward the bartender. “Cut off the guitarist, okay? He’s had enough.” It shouldn’t have been up to me to ask her to do that, but then again, he had already passed the point of drunkenness, and for whatever reason, she was still serving him.
That was half of the trouble: Carter still had charisma even when drunk. He always seemed to convince them that serving him was in their best interest. I didn’t know what he promised them, but he rarely got cut off, and it was starting to drive me crazy.
Sure enough, she raised an eyebrow at me, looking skeptical. “He’s one of my best customers,” she said.
I scowled at her. “You want me to get a cop in here to breathalyze him?” I snapped. “You realize that it’s against the law for you to keep serving him if he’s already drunk?”
She pursed her lips tightly. “Fine,” she said. “I’ll stop serving him. But you can be the one to tell him that because the last thing I need is for him to try to start a fight with me.”
I nodded curtly at her, then turned to head back to the stage. Fortunately, the band was assembled, and we were all ready to start our soundcheck.
Things went fine. Not great, but not terribly, either. Muscle memory could take you pretty far, I guess, and we had definitely practiced enough over the years to nail our hits at the very least. We still couldn’t add any new material, though, and it was starting to bother me more and more.
We finished up the show, and Luke
and I started to break things down. Carter and Mark, of course, headed immediately to the bar. I wondered how long it would be before Carter found out that he wasn’t being served anymore and cause a ruckus.
I hated that I had to think that way. I didn’t want to be his keeper.
And there was a part of me that knew even if the bartender refused to give Carter a drink, he was going to find a way to get one anyway. From the way the groupies were flocked around them, it was only a matter of time.
“I’ve been talking to an agent,” Luke said suddenly.
I dropped a cymbal with a loud crash, staring at him with wide eyes. Normally, my equipment was more important to me than anything else, and I wouldn’t have left anything sitting there on the floor. But what he had just said was way too important.
“What?” I asked dumbly.
“You heard me,” Luke retorted. “He gave me a card after our last show up at Bay Heights. He’s interested.”
I stared at him for a moment and then shook my head. “We’re already getting okay gigs,” I said. “We should probably focus on that for now, shouldn’t we?”
Luke groaned. “If we focus on that, you know we’re never going to change. We’re never going to get anywhere else,” he said. I hated to admit that he was right.
“Well, what did he say?” I finally sighed. This was it, then. This was how things came to a head. We needed to figure out some way to keep moving forward, even if it meant that we had to ditch the other two, reform the band in some other way.
I didn’t like to think about that.
“We’ve got a shot,” Luke said, his words dripping with import. “We need a better-quality album to shop around, though.” He was quiet for a moment. “I know that you’re looking for us to put some more new material into our routine, but to be honest, I think we have enough material. We just need to put it together into a better demo.”
I snorted. “What’s going to make a better demo is if we don’t record it in your basement next time,” I pointed out.
“Sure,” Luke agreed. A fleeting grin flashed across his face. “What if I said that I could get us into a studio?”
I blinked in surprise. “How?”
Luke shrugged. “Someone owes me a favor,” he said.
For a minute, I let myself consider the possibility of it. If only someone had owed him a favor months ago before everything started to go to shit. Now, though, things were different. If we wanted to make the most of our one shot in the studio, we were going to need to get our shit together. And besides, if this was our only chance in a studio, I wanted to get at least one new song put together.
Just for the thrill of it, really. Hearing a song come together, there was nothing like that. Besides, this might be our only chance, and I couldn’t help but feel that the songs we had written before, even the ones that hadn’t been written all that long ago, were in some ways juvenile. So much had happened since we had first gotten together as a band.
Things were different now than I had ever imagined they would be for us.
As if on cue, I looked over at the bar in time to see Carter polish off another shot. I felt bitterness tighten the corners of my mouth. “You know we’ll never be able to pull it off,” I said to Luke.
He was silent, and I knew he was thinking of the possibilities as well. What could we do—how could we get out of this situation? Neither of us wanted to ditch Mark and Carter, even if that was the only way to save the band.
Luke laughed bitterly. “I guess it was worth a thought, anyway,” he said.
The bitterness in his voice hit me hard. Even though I had spent weeks knowing that the band was falling apart, I didn’t want to face the fact that he knew it too.
“I’m not ruling it out,” I said fiercely. “But we’re going to need to have a serious band meeting first.”
“Sure,” Luke said, and I could hear from his doubtful tone that he didn’t think it would ever happen. That only made me more determined to figure something out, however.
Somehow, I was going to have to get Mark and Carter to get their shit together and focus. Without everyone working together, we were going to blow our shot at stardom, yet I knew that none of us could make it on our own.
For the first time in a while, I felt certain that we had to keep the band together, at any cost.
I looked back toward the bar, though, wondering what that cost might prove to be.
14
Leah
He was drumming again. He had been so great for the past couple of weeks, practically tiptoeing on eggshells when he knew I was at home, but now he was drumming again. I let out a huff as I looked at my clock. It was nearly two in the morning. What the hell was his problem?
I lay in bed for a moment wondering if I could ignore it. It was unacceptable, but on the other hand, I had been laying low since our hookup. I wasn’t sure I had it in me to storm over there, not right now. Who knew what might happen?
I felt a shiver go through me as I considered it.
I thought about the lingerie I had let Piper convince me to buy. It was wrapped in tissue paper in the bottom drawer of my nightstand. Not that I would ever wear it. It was tamer than what my coworker had wanted me to get, but it still wasn’t anything I would ever be comfortable in. Even if I agreed that I did look good in it.
What if I went over there now? Dressed in that? But no, I couldn’t do that. I just couldn’t.
I didn’t know what I was waiting for. After talking with Piper, I had been so sure that this was what I wanted. Or rather, I at least wanted to see where things might go with him.
I guess I’d been waiting for some sign from him, though. I didn’t expect him to chase me, but I had thought I would, I don’t know, hear something from him. I had gone over there with a pizza, after all. He could return the favor, invent some sort of excuse. I didn’t have to make all the moves, did I?
I didn’t think I was capable of making all the moves. That just wasn’t like me.
So when he didn’t come after me, I didn’t know what to do. Finally, I’d realized that if I wanted something to happen, I was going to have to make a move. I’d put on the lingerie under my robe, hoping to surprise him, and I’d waited and waited for him to come home.
It had been late when he finally did, and I had tried not to feel too worried about it. It didn’t mean he had been with a girl, it just meant that his band had something going on that night. That was all.
When he did come home, though, it was with the singer of the band. And on the singer’s arms were two beautiful women. I had felt my heart clench in my chest. One of those girls was there for Jayson. I was sure of it.
I felt like such a fool. He was a rock star. Girls were constantly throwing themselves at him. Girls would continue to constantly throw themselves at him. He was only going to get more popular. His fame was only going to get greater.
Piper had had all the right words, but she had been wrong when she said that I could have him, that I was better than those other girls. I had been right. It had been just a one-night thing to him. He didn’t care if I had a brain or not. In fact, it was probably better, in his eyes, if I didn’t have a brain.
I rolled over, pulling a pillow over my head. It didn’t block out the sound of his drumming, though.
I remembered what he had said before, about how drumming was a release for him. I wished I could find some release, but as far as my brain was concerned, the only release I might find that night would be through sex with him, and that wasn’t going to happen.
I kept telling myself that if I could just ignore him for long enough, then maybe my crush on him would go away. Instead, it only seemed to get worse, and it was proving impossible to really avoid him when we shared a wall.
In any case, it wasn’t as though I could avoid him any longer. Not when things were like this. I wasn’t going to march over there in lingerie, but neither was I going to let him keep me up all night as he banged away on his drums. Not when I had an imp
ortant meeting in the morning. No way. I needed to get some sleep.
I climbed out of bed, cussing all the while. How was it possible that I wanted the guy, when he was such an ass? He had absolutely no regard for anyone other than himself. Clearly. I didn’t care what sort of personal trouble he was going through at the moment, what sort of things he was working through. You just didn’t start slamming on drums in the middle of the night.
I pulled on my robe, wondering as I did so whether I shouldn’t put on something a bit more substantial. I remembered the way he had leered at me that first time I went over there. What exactly was I looking for?
I told myself that the only reason I didn’t change was because I shouldn’t have to get fully dressed and march over there in the middle of the night. I wasn’t sure if that was the full truth, though. Nor did I want to examine any of that too closely. He was an ass, and I didn’t want to believe he was anything other, or that I couldn’t possibly hold myself back, knowing he was an ass.
I banged on his door. When Jayson answered, his face was stormy. As though he had a right to be upset. As though he was the one who was being kept up in the middle of the night by a rude neighbor.
I gathered myself to yell at him, but something in his expression gave me pause. He was clearly upset about something, and I could tell from the way he was avoiding looking at me, from the way his hands were jammed in his pockets, that it had nothing to do with my knocking on the door.
I thought back to what he had said before, about how drumming was his means of coping. As pissed off as I was at being kept awake before my meeting the next morning, I felt a little flicker of concern go through me. He had been so good about keeping things down since I had told him off the first time; something led me to believe that he wouldn’t have broken that pact if there wasn’t a damned good reason for it.
Still, where did we go from here? I couldn’t sleep if he continued this racket, but something told me he wouldn’t be able to sleep if I didn’t let him work this out of his system somehow.
The Boy Next Door: A Standalone Enemies-to-Lovers Romance Page 7