This time, we were treated like real rock stars too—we had a genuine tour bus, not a shitty little van to cram ourselves in. We also had a more rigorous tour schedule and a bigger crew. It wasn’t that it felt more real, but it felt like maybe the world was taking us more seriously this time.
We would also have a month in Europe after the States this time. I hadn’t known that we were that popular, and I didn’t know if it had all happened after our first tour or during it, but I was ready to bring it—harder, faster, longer, and louder. The first show on tour, I felt a little nervous covering guitar by myself, but by the second show, I was comfortable. Our album still went out with the tracks we’d already recorded, but after Liz had practiced on her own for a week, we’d practiced as a reformed band, and we weren’t meeting three days a week. We were practicing six days a week up until the day we got back on the road.
By day three on tour, I was partying hard again. I had offers of all kinds for crazy sex, lots more than during our first tour, and I suspected it was partly for the same reason CJ had kept a hands off policy until my birthday. Most men might have been turned on by this teenage girl, but few would admit it and only a handful would attempt intercourse with an underage young woman. Yeah, I’d been with a few older guys before my eighteenth birthday, but now there were so many more to choose from.
It also could have been that I was thinner on this tour than the first, and I credited smoking and drugs for that. My appetite decreased when I smoked but all the drinking made it hard to keep food down and the smorgasbord of drugs? Well, those made me forget everything. Except pot. Sometimes it made me hungry.
On day five, we’d had a huge sold out show somewhere in Texas, and I was blitzed out of my mind. I’d fucked some guy closer to my age but the combination of alcohol and whatever stupid pill I’d swallowed made me weepy. I tossed him out after we were done and I picked up my phone. I started to text CJ and realized my fingers were too uncoordinated to do the task. Sober, I could text with the best of them, but I couldn’t even type a single word now, even with the help of autocorrect.
So I called him.
I expected to be greeted by his voicemail but he answered.
“Kyle. What’s up?”
“Hey, CJ.”
After a second, he asked, “What’s wrong?”
I started crying then, because he could tell I was messed up. “Nothing.”
“Kyle…”
“Oh, CJ, why can’t we be together?”
“Baby, you know why. You’re on tour and I’m on tour. It’s physically impossible.”
“That’s not what I mean. I mean—” I started crying again.
“You been drinking, Kyle?”
My voice was high pitched when I answered. “Yes.”
“Maybe you should go to bed, baby.”
I took a long, jerky breath as I controlled my sobs. “I cheated on you.”
He sounded amused and that pissed me off. “What do you mean?”
“I mean I’ve fucked some guys already on tour.”
“Okay.”
“And that’s why this is never gonna work. I’m gonna cheat. You’re gonna cheat. We’re a couple of skanky whores.” CJ started laughing then…and that pissed me off more. “It’s not funny. It’s true!”
“Kyle, we talked about this. We agreed that what we do on the road is okay.”
I tried to bite my tongue but the whiskey and pills had loosened it way too much. “No, actually, you imposed that parti—particular mandate.” Oh, I should have stopped talking. I was slurring my words and having a hard time getting any of them to come out, besides the fact that my head was fuzzy. I might not even remember most of the conversation in the morning.
His voice was overly patient and it keeping me pissed off. “Do you remember why I said that?”
“‘Cause you’re an asshole.” I didn’t really mean it, although my heart might have. CJ was, frankly, the only guy I could picture myself with for more than a few days at a time. Most guys were a flash in the pan that I didn’t care much about. The only exceptions had been Decker (and that made sense, considering he’d been my “first love” and I’d lost my virginity to him) and Bad Dog (but only because he was also a friend). Oh, God, I was thinking too much in my inebriated state and I was way too emotional. I’d have to hide my phone when I planned to drink from now on. “And Dog. I miss him too.”
“When did you get a dog?”
“Not a dog. Bad Dog. He used to be one of our roadies. And he was so good to me.” I burst into tears again.
“Kyle, honey, I wish I could be there.”
Anger flared through my limbs again. “No, you don’t. That’s bullshit, CJ. If you were here with me, you couldn’t get a blowjob from the cute blonde in the first row!”
CJ’s patience finally wore thin. I shouldn’t have been surprised. I was lashing out. If I’d just been weepy, he might have been able to tolerate it, but I’d compounded it all by being mean and hateful, and I’d worn out my welcome. “Kyle.”
“What, CJ? I get it, okay? I get it. But you don’t have to be so…in my face about it.”
I could hear the tension in his voice. “You’d rather I lie to you?”
Well, no. No, I wouldn’t. But I was irrational and maybe even egging for a fight. “Know what? I don’t even know why I thought this would work. You are hot. You’re amazing in bed. But this is never gonna work…so have a nice life!” I hung up the phone.
Oh, holy hell. What had I done?
“Conversion” ~ Straight Line Stitch
Chapter Thirty-eight
I’D PASSED OUT shortly after hanging up on CJ, and I woke the next morning (thanks to a wake up call) feeling like someone had dropped an anvil on my head. I was still wearing my stage clothes, sprawled on the foot of the hotel’s double bed, the comforter still in place. All I’d have to do would be to smooth it out, and no one would ever know I’d been on the bed at all.
I brought my hand to my head, sucking in a sharp breath. Sweet Jesus. I hadn’t been hung over like this since—well, maybe ever. This one was bad. And I felt nauseous too, so much so that I could tell I might not be able to hold even water down—which completely sucked because my mouth felt like sandpaper.
I took my time making my way into the bathroom so I could relieve my bladder, and the details of my conversation with CJ started coming back to me. I hadn’t said anything I hadn’t been thinking, but I knew I might have damaged our friendship beyond repair.
Well, it didn’t matter. I hadn’t said anything I hadn’t meant. But, after pouring a little water in a cup and then walking back in the room, I picked up my phone. CJ had tried calling twice and then finally texted. Let’s talk when you’re sober. We’d had other drunken phone conversations, but it just so happened that CJ was a nicer, happier drunk than I’d turned out to be.
And I didn’t know that I wanted to talk with him. I was feeling raw and hurt, and I’d given that away last night. He was the one in the position of power—out of the two of us, he was the one in the relationship with nothing to lose. He didn’t love me, so he could walk away. I had made the choice the night before—wisely, I might add, in spite of my drunken stupor—to do that myself. I had to step away from this relationship (if that’s what you’d call it) before I got hurt any more than I already was. Yes, I could have done it in a more bad ass way, but what was done was done. I wasn’t going to apologize and I wasn’t going to take back any words I’d said, but maybe I could save what little friendship we might have left.
I sent him a text. Call you later?
I got ready for the ride. We had a concert that night, so I had to feel better by then. I showered and packed and then dragged my luggage downstairs. One of the roadies threw my bag on the bus while I made my way to the little Starbucks station in the hotel and bought a small mocha latte, a bottle of water, a banana, and a biscotti. I sipped at the coffee but was throwing up in the toilet on the bus before we were actually on the road. So
I instead sipped on the water and took tiny bites of the biscotti and banana before curling up in a bunk and praying for death.
I fell asleep again, though, and how I managed to avoid motion sickness is beyond me. When I woke up, though, I felt a little more human and wanted to try eating again because I was hungry. My bandmates, all except for Liz, were still sleeping as well, so I figured they’d had equally rough nights. My memories were fuzzy after a certain point last night, save for my conversation with CJ which happened to be etched in my brain and always would.
I drank more water, even though my stomach was still a little upset, and took more small bites of the food I’d set aside. This time, I managed to keep everything down and felt a little better as time went on, and I checked out my phone. There was another text from CJ. As long as you can do it before four CST.
I checked my phone, already synced with Eastern Standard Time, and it was a little before three o’clock. Damn time zones confused the fuck out of me, and I had to actually picture the sun and the way it moved from east to west to figure out what time it was where. You would have thought all my travel as a child would have helped and, in a way it did, because I could think about it logically and finally make the connection, but there was nothing intuitive about it. It was two o’clock where CJ was, so we had a little time to talk. I just needed some privacy. Nowhere on the bus could afford any, really. I considered holding out till we stopped for gas, but a lot of times the driver gassed up after we were dropped off at our destination. I saw that Liz had her earphones in and decided to just go for it. What the hell, right? I had nothing to lose and I didn’t care. My bandmates by now knew I had a pretty rocky relationship with the guy who was my non-boyfriend.
So I called and CJ answered. “You feeling better?”
I shook my head, not that he could see that. “Better than what? Someone who’s been hit by a train? Yeah, sure.”
CJ laughed, in spite of the tension I imagined I could feel between us. “You were pretty upset last night.”
“Yeah, about that.” I’d had some time to think when my head had stopped pounding, and I needed to protect my already vulnerable heart. It was stupid that I’d let myself get to that point, but I had an obligations to stop it from going any further. “You can probably pretty much ignore everything I said, but…” The silence stretched out in front of me.
Oh, no. I’d taken too long to figure out how I was going to say what I needed to say. “But what?”
“I think it’s best that we don’t see each other. At all.”
“Okay…”
I had to just spit it all out. “Probably better to not even call or text or anything like that.” I couldn’t read what he was thinking through his thick silence. It made me a little nervous, so I kept talking. “I mean…like I said last night, we’re both fucking other people, and I think it just confuses us, you know?”
“I’m not confused at all.” It was my turn to be silent. I didn’t know how to counter that, because I hadn’t meant that I was confused. I’d meant that I was hurt, but I was too damn afraid to say it. “I know exactly what I want, Kyle. But I don’t think you’re ready for that.”
Yeah. That hurt. It hurt bad. And I didn’t want to hurt anymore. “Yeah. I think you’re right.” I tried my fucking hardest to sound sweet as could be, to keep any hint of sadness out of my voice. “So, I’m gonna wish you and Death Crunch all the best. Maybe we’ll see you around.”
“Kyle, I—”
“Bye, CJ.”
Fuck me. That had been the hardest thing I’d ever done, and it felt like my insides had shriveled. Almost like a grape turns into a raisin, my internals felt as though they were collapsing in on themselves.
I surprised myself, though, because no tears dropped. I must have cried it all out last night before passing out. Yeah, it still hurt like a motherfucker, but CJ wasn’t worth anymore of my tears. Man whore.
God, I wanted a drink. I wanted to drown it all out until I could forget him.
Liz pulled out her earphones. “Kyle?” I looked over at her. “Sorry, man. I didn’t mean to, but I overheard that. You all right?”
I forced a smile. “Top of my game.”
She nodded. Being such a private person, she respected my need to not talk about it. Barbie would have already been trying to pry the entire story out of me and, short of that, would have begun making up her own. “I’m here if you change your mind.”
“Thanks.” I rested my head against the back of the couch and closed my eyes. I still had the music, my first love. CJ couldn’t compare…and that was what I had to remind myself.
* * *
The sales for our second album surpassed the first one in no time flat. We were all amazed and shocked and thrilled. And then we read some of the reviews—and most of the world (well, paid critics, at any rate) thought our sound was more mature, more solid, and less “bubble gum”…whatever the fuck that meant.
And the reviews made me proud of the hard work we’d put into our band.
But we were only as good as our last appearance, and we were getting some negative comments about the shows—that Barbie was wooden (on occasion), that Liz’s bass playing sucked (it didn’t), that we were stoned out of our minds (rarely). It pissed me off, because I knew I gave a solid performance no matter how blitzed I was. But it made me realize, once more, that I needed to get more serious. Maybe I was missing something in my haze. I needed to save the chemical enhancers for after the show.
It was hard to pass up, though, when we had random meet and greets in various cities. Some fans were amazing and fun to meet. I remember one teenage girl asking me for my autograph and the poor thing was shaking like a leaf. Others got so choked up, they couldn’t say anything. Most of them were calm and even, though, and they knew that we were normal people, just like they were. Once in a while, though, you’d get the fucking fans who acted like they knew you, who acted like just because they’d read about you in Revolver or followed you on Twitter that they were your best friends. Well, sure, they might have known all about me, but that didn’t mean I knew all about them. Some of those weird guys (and girls, to be fair) might have thought they were in love with me, but the feeling wasn’t mutual. And I had no idea how to communicate that.
It was times like those that I was glad we had bodyguards now. Eddie from our first tour might have been a bit of a creep because he was an older guy, but there was a whole other level of creep that we were just beginning to discover.
The biggest problem was we didn’t want to insult the fans or hurt their feelings, so we had to be careful about how we handled those situations. I understood now why some celebrities would run away or flip off people or even punch paparazzi. It got to be difficult, having to always feel like we were onstage, even when we weren’t.
And, excuse or not, that just made me plunge deeper into the chemical abyss. CJ, the fans, the plethora of mediocre reviews of the tour that increased the longer we were on the road—and then Barbie constantly whining and picking fights and acting like a diva. But, little did I know, she had only just begun.
Chapter Thirty-nine
BARBIE WAS MORE everything than she’d been on the first tour—she was louder and more obnoxious; more demanding and more narcissistic; she was, once again, full of self-importance and believed that she was the Vagabonds.
She was not. Not by a long shot.
The reason why I refrained from beating her ass on a daily basis was because she was important.
It seemed to start near the beginning of the tour. No matter what we had available in the places where we played (whether it was in the small dressing rooms prepped for us or just a green room or two to hang out in), Barbie demanded more. The first time seemed legit—she asked a staffer if he could “fetch” her some Tylenol because her head was throbbing. Never mind that it had been due to her own indiscretions the night before. I understood. No one wanted to perform with a pounding head. It was hard enough standing there under the someti
mes-too-hot lights and do our jobs well—it was doubly hard when we didn’t feel good enough to be standing there.
But the very next night in a different place, she asked the staffer to exchange the “pedestrian” Pure Life water for something artesian. And the stupid asses did it for her. That was all it took for her to becoming a demanding princess who expected too much but usually got everything she asked for. That made her bad enough. She began to act like she was better than the rest of us because she was spoiled. Liz managed to ignore her and Vicki usually stayed away entirely, only showing up when it was time to perform—and I knew why, especially because it got worse the longer we were on tour. But Barbie distracted us from a lot of Vicki’s antics because she was going overboard.
I called her on it on more than one occasion. One time, she demanded flowers in our room because the place “smelled like farts and armpits.” I rolled my eyes. Yeah, it smelled musty and like leftover food, but it wasn’t as bad as she’d made it out to be.
“Barbie, you weren’t born with a silver spoon in your mouth. You don’t have to have everything set to perfection for you to be able to perform. We getting ready to rock, for God’s sake. You can do that, with or without being surrounded by roses.” Would any of my favorite metal guys ever do that? Hell…would CJ and his band ask for flowers in their room? Fuck, no. If those guys were in a room with Barbie carrying on, they’d probably pass gas on purpose just to make her regret opening her stupid mouth.
If she’d just continued being a spoiled diva, I could have dismissed her, but she seemed hell bent on pissing me off. At first, I just thought I was letting her get to me. It took a while for me to figure out that what she was doing was intentional.
It might have started just because, well…because she was Barbie, and it was in her nature to be difficult, but it might have started because I’d pissed her off. We were all sitting in the living area of the bus one afternoon after a particularly grueling show. We’d had some sound issues but, more than that, we’d had some problems with inebriation. It was all too clear to me that both Barbie and Vicki were blitzed. I hadn’t asked Vicki if she was chasing the dragon again and I really didn’t want to know. Knowing added responsibility on my shoulders, but it was one of those things that I couldn’t fix anyway, much as I wanted to. I was young and stupid. We should have locked her in rehab until we knew she was squeaky clean, but we all had our problems and one of them was being too young to know what to do. And our manager this time was less involved with us personally. She made sure we were where we needed to be when we needed to be, whether it was a call for a show, an interview, a meet and greet, or to get our asses in the hotel lobby for checkout. But she wasn’t like Peter in most ways, and that was a very good thing. He had ultimately been poison. It would have been nice, though, if she’d been a little more involved. I honestly didn’t know what she did with her day, and maybe that was okay too. I did know that the tour itself ran smoothly. Unlike our first tour, not once did we have any places that couldn’t find our reservations. We were always expected wherever we went. On occasion, she had our meals taken care of as well, but we told her early on that we didn’t want her regulating our whole lives. We wanted a little freedom; after all, that was what we were used to.
On the Road: (Vagabonds Book 2) (New Adult Rock Star Romance) Page 24