Reality of Life (Perception Book 2)

by Shandi Boyes

  “Fucking move” I yell angrily.

  But instead of moving, my dad takes a stronger stance. Planting his feet hard on the ground, he crosses his arms and shakes his head firmly.

  “Move now” I scream, as I throw open Nick’s door and climb down from his truck.

  My anger is surging past my heart ache.

  “No Noah, you can’t do this” my dad states firmly while his dark eyes follow my every movement.

  My jaw starts ticking that much that my molars are grinding together.

  “Get out of the fucking way or I will move you out of my way” I state angrily.

  My tone telling him that I was not joking. I was not that little kid he had left behind anymore.

  “No, Noah” my dad answers firmly as his voice cracks and his eyes start to water.

  I lift my arm to take a swing at my dad, noticing that he never once attempts to shelter himself from my swing, before I am hit hard from the side and tackled to the ground.

  “Stop Noah, please stop!” Jacob breathes heavily.

  Jacob tackled me hard enough that he had knocked me more than a metre from where I was originally standing. And no matter how much I screamed at him to get the fuck off me and threw punches hard at his body, he pegs me down onto the ground using his weight until I no longer have any energy left to fight. Jacob always uses his size to his advantage and it is starting to fucking piss me off. The instant he lets go of me, I scamper across the gravel to lean my back against Nick’s truck.

  I look over to where my dad was standing to see that he is watching me with a concerned look on his face, before he slowly turns around and walks out of the driveway.

  “You can hate me as much as you want, but I am not giving up on you.” Jacob advises roughly, as he sits himself down next to me and leans his back against the truck.

  “You were not the only one that lost Emily. We all lost her, they lost her” Jacob states while he motions his head towards the front of the house.

  Patrice, Lola and Jenni are standing on the front porch staring at me with worry lines etched into their faces. They had just witnessed the exchange between Jacob and I. Patrice is holding her hand over her mouth as she softly weeps while being cradled in Lola’s arms. I feel terribly remorseful that I have created more pain for Patrice. She has been more of a mother to me these past two years than my own mother has been my entire life.

  Patrice accepted me into her family like I was one of her own sons. The night that Emily was roofied at Maverick’s bar, she sat with me for an hour continually thanking me for saving and defending her daughter. She also organised for the hospital cafeteria to bring me some dinner since I hadn’t eaten. And she had trusted me enough to leave the hospital that night knowing that I would look after Emily. The next morning when she arrived to visit Emily, she had found me laying on top of her daughter ravishing her delicious mouth. Emily had tried to stop me from giving her our daily morning kiss as she thought she would have a terrible case of morning breath, but nothing about Emily was ever terrible, she was perfect in every single way.

  But instead of Patrice being angry on what she had walked in on, she walked directly over to me and kissed me on the cheek while she whispered “You are the best thing that has ever happened to Emily and I will be so incredibly proud to call you my son in law one day”.

  I remember staring at her a little dumbfounded to start with, before I slowly nodded my head. I had never had anyone tell me they were proud of me before and ever since that day Patrice has made sure I was always included in every family event, just like I was her own child.

  I slump down low against Nick’s truck and cradle my head in my arms. I try to get my composure back as I can tell that I am starting to spiral out of control. Jacob begged me yesterday to go and talk to someone professional, but I can’t talk about my feelings, talking about shit never changes anything. It doesn’t make it better, it can’t bring Emily back, so what is the use in talking about it. I will continue battling along on my own in a hope that one day I will eventually be able to climb out of the deep pit I am currently sitting in.

  I hear the sound of gravel crunching underfoot that I open my eyes and notice a small pair of black polished shoes standing directly in front of me. As I raise my gaze, I notice a pair of black stocking covered legs, and a black dress, before I look into the tear filled eyes of Emily’s mom. Emily’s mom has the same dark hair coloring as Emily, but she has Lola’s beige skin. She has the same little turned up nose, but her eyes are hazel in colour. When I look into her hazel eyes I can see the pain of her loss reflecting back at me.

  “I’m sorry” I choke out before the tears start streaming down my face.

  I am sorry for falling in love with her daughter and pulling her into the misery of my life. I am sorry for not being there to save her and protect her this time. And I am sorry that Patrice has lost her baby girl. I lower my head back down against my knees as I cry over everything I was sorry for. Patrice squats down and wraps her small arms around my shoulders, huddling in close against me as we both weep together over the loss of our beautiful Emily.

  “You have nothing to be sorry for Noah. Emily loved you so very much. It is better to have loved for only a minute than not to have loved at all?” Patrice whispers before giving me one last brief hug.

  Chapter 4

  The next morning, I wake up lying flat on my stomach in bed, drooling against my pillow. I lift my head and have to shelter my eyes from the blinding sunlight that is streaming through my curtains from outside. I look at the alarm clock on my bedside table and notice that it is 1.53pm in the afternoon. The only signs that I have a hangover is the slight thumping in my head and the feeling that I have swallowed razor blades, but other than that, I feel relatively normal. Today is the first day that Jacob hasn’t dragged my drunk ass into the freezing cold shower to sober me up. I slowly crawl up and kneel on the bed while rubbing my eyes. I sit on my bed feeling confused. Was it all a dream, is Emily still here? I peer around my room and other than smelling like a liquor store it looks the same as it did before Emily died. Then I notice the crumbled suit sitting in the corner and my hopes that it was all a nightmare soon vanishes.

  I throw on a pair of jeans and shirt, before heading out to search for Jacob. The feeling of uneasiness settling deep within my stomach. Jacob hasn’t left my side since I found out about Emily, so I am now concerned about what has changed today. When I reach the end of the hallway I can overhear part of a conversation.

  “They can’t expect him to do that” states Marcus angrily.

  “It was all written in the contract” advises another deep voice, that I believe may belong to Cormack.

  I walk around the corner from the hallway and I notice that Nick, Marcus, Slater and Cormack are all sitting around Jacob’s rectangular wooden dining table. Marcus’s intense green eyes are staring directly at Cormack, whose eyes are gazing over a document in front of him.

  “Can’t you get us out of it?” asks Slater, you can hear the anxiety in his voice.

  Marcus notices me standing there and quickly nudges Cormack with his elbow, causing his gaze to turn towards me, before Slater and Nick’s heads turn around in unison.

  “What are you trying to get them out of?” I ask Cormack as I walk over towards them.

  I look down and notice the contract we had signed to do the six-week tour with the ‘O’Reilly Brothers’ is scattered all over the table.

  “It’s nothing Noah” Marcus rebuts quickly, as he starts to gather all of the loose papers I was just peering at and stacks them together in a pile.

  I look at Slater, causing his eyes to quickly dart down to the table, unable to maintain my eye contact. Nick keeps his eyes firmly planted on mine, but his mood has always been hard for me to read, so he doesn’t give me any indication on what they are discussing.

  “What do they want you to get them out of?” I ask directly to Cormack.

  Cormack looks directly at me, before his eyes
dart over to Nick, who is shaking his head softly at him. He seems to be trying to decide whether he wants to tell me what is going on, or to follow with the same bullshit excuse the guys are already giving. I can tell by the look on the guys faces that it wasn’t good news and since Cormack is here it obviously has something to do with the band. I lift my eyebrows into my hairline and wait for Cormack to respond.

  “You signed a contract stating that you would do a six-week tour with the ‘O’Reilly Brothers’” Cormack finally answers as he breaths out heavily.

  “Yes, and then my fiancé died” I reply angrily, as I notice in the corner of my eye that Jacob walks into the dining room from the kitchen.

  “I think that fucking outweighs the importance of a tour” I continue, before leaning my hands against the table to look directly into Cormack’s eyes.

  If he even attempts to say that the tour was more important than Emily, I am prepared to launch myself over the table.

  “It does, that is why we need you to let us handle this Noah” Jacob advises as he walks over close to me and places his hand on my shoulder.

  “Then why the fuck are you all sitting here discussing the contract? Just tell them we can’t do it? It’s not that fucking hard” I state angrily, while looking at four sets of eyes that are all staring at me.

  They all look as exhausted and haunted as I do over losing Emily, but it doesn’t help to lessen my fury that is starting to rise.

  “It doesn’t work that way Noah” Cormack declares, causing Marcus to backhand him in the arm, while narrowing his eyes at him.

  “Shut the fuck up” Slater warns Cormack, pointing his index finger at him in a threatening manner.

  “We can handle this Noah” Slater advises softly as he looks towards me.

  I turn to face Jacob, as he has the worst poker face ever. Even if he attempts to lie to me, I will be able to tell that he is.

  “What is going on Jacob and don’t fucking lie to me” I question, looking directly into Jacob’s blue eyes.

  He lifts his hand and scratches his eyebrow, a tell-tale sign that Jacob is nervous about something.

  “The contract you guys signed two weeks ago had a financial clause attached to it. The promoters of the concert wanted to ensure that if you accepted the contract they were not going to be liable for any more loss in revenue in the event of an accident, like what had happened to redemption’s lead guitarist” Jacob advises while looking at me.

  The redemption lead guitarist had broken his leg in three places, meaning that they were not able to finalise the last half of the tour on the East Coast. That was the reason ‘Rise Up’ was brought in as the replacement supporting act. I didn’t even read over the contract when the concert promoters gave it to me. I was that excited to be finally doing our first tour that I would have signed anything they requested.

  “What does that mean?” I ask Jacob.

  Whose appearance seems even more gaunt today than he had five days ago.

  “It means if you fail to meet your obligations to the concert promoters you will be required to pay compensation for any loss in revenue for your contract period” Cormack says roughly.

  So they want money for us not completing the tour? Our album had gone to number one on the billboard charts two weeks ago, so the endorsement cheques from that should be easily be able to cover the concert costs, shouldn’t it?

  “How much loss are they expecting?” I ask Cormack.

  He starts to ruffle through the papers that Marcus had just finished stacking in front of him. Once he finds the piece of paper he was searching for, he looks up towards me and I notice his Adam’s apple bobbing up and down before he slowly breathes out.

  “Two million dollars”

  The instant Cormack breathes out two million dollars I feel like I am going to be sick. How the fuck could the cost have been so high? I slightly fumble on my feet, before I flop down hard on one of the spare chairs positioned around the dining table.

  “Two million dollars?” I ask Cormack unbelievably.

  I must have heard him wrong, there is no way their loss could be two million dollars for a six-week tour. Cormack looks back down at the piece of paper in his hand before he starts nodding his head.

  “How?” I question.

  When we had signed the contract we had been offered two hundred thousand as a total payment for the whole six-weeks. How does two hundred thousand dollars end up blowing out to two million dollars?

  “After your press conference last week stating that you were going on a concert tour, and that tickets were still available for all the concert dates, ticket sales increased by over 30%. The popularity of your album and your acoustics performance on MTV created quite a buzz in the industry and your fans flocked to get tickets to your very first concert” Cormack states before looking back down towards the piece of paper in his hand.

  “You were doing a total of nineteen concerts over six weeks. Ticket sales alone were over one point four million dollars” he reads off the paper in front of him.

  “Then they want compensation for needing to find a replacement band, and full payment for the cancelled concert in San Francisco that was supposed to be held yesterday” Cormack continues reading, before his eyes dart up to look at mine.

  I can see that he feels remorseful considering the fact that we didn’t perform the concert yesterday as it was Emily’s funeral.

  “How much have we made from the album?” questions Nick, who is sitting next to me.

  My head had been spinning around with all the information Cormack had been telling me that I had completely forgotten that the rest of the band is still sitting here.

  “You don’t make as much from the first album as you would expect, your contract is signed based more on the number of hits than actual sales” Cormack responds to Nick.

  “How much?” I ask angrily, as my irritation rises as I feel guilty already discussing the band only a day after burying Emily.

  It was my obsession with the band that had caused me to waste away months of time I had left with Emily. I badly hurt her those two months and I was only just in the process of making it up to her when she died.

  “Just under one point two million dollars” Cormack advises.

  Doing a quick calculation in my head I realise that we are still going to owe a little over eight hundred thousand dollars.

  “Fuck!” Nick roars loudly “How the fuck are we supposed to come up with eight hundred thousand dollars?” he questions as he stands up and walks away from the table.

  I run my fingers through my hair and over my scalp, as I try to contemplate how the fuck we can get out of this contract. I look over to see that Slater is staring at Cormack with his mouth marginally open. Marcus has his gaze firmly planted on me with his eyebrows pulled together in concern and Nick is now angrily pacing back and forth.

  “You don’t need to worry about this right now Noah, we will work out something” Jacob advises quietly, as he sits in the chair Nick has just vacated.

  “Did you read over the contract Jacob?” I ask.

  He was always good with these type of legal documents. I shouldn’t have been so stupid by signing any legal contract without having a lawyer or at least Jacob look over it.

  “Yes I did” he replies “It is as Cormack has stated, if you fail to comply with the contract you will have to pay the compensation amount they are claiming” he replies sullenly.

  I wish Emily was here so I could talk to her, she would have been able to offer me guidance with things like this. But I can’t just bury her and then go on tour. I couldn’t do that to her. I can barely function without her, let alone go on stage and perform.

  But as I look over at the three guys gathered around the table, their faces marred in panic, I realise how much they have helped me throughout my life. I would feel incredibly guilty to leave them with this financial burden. Slater had just given up his job in construction once the band had signed a contract with Destiny Records. Ni
ck used his first lot of endorsement cheques to buy a house for himself and Jenni to live in, and she has just given birth to baby Jasper a couple of weeks ago. Emily fell instantly in love with Jasper, when she was asked to be his godmother she cried happy tears while she whispered “yes” over and over again. She would never forgive me if I was the reason Jasper ended up homeless. I don’t want to disappoint Emily again; I had already disappointed her enough. Fuck, can I do this, can I do the tour and help my friends who are more like brothers to me?