by Vivian Lux
Chapter Two
Ewan
"Sinister Affinity, huh?" I said. My voice sounded normal. I was only sighing on the inside.
"Yeah, I'm Noah," the greasy blond guy said, reaching out to shake my hand. It had been while since I had to share a green room and I was doing my best to be okay with the intrusion. "This is Lenny on drums and over there is Carter on bass."
"Ewan," I said, accepting his proffered hand. He tried to pull one of those bone-crushing handshakes, but I matched him with a grin and pretended not to notice his wince as he pulled away.
"So uh, yeah. We're opening for you guys," Noah went on, surreptitiously rubbing his knuckles.
"Thanks mate," Jules called from the couch. "'Preciate it and all."
"Right, but I wanted to ask you," Noah pressed. "Your band name? Twat Yacht?"
I hid my snicker, but Jules didn't bother, letting out a hearty laugh.
Noah looked vaguely pissed. "It's just," he said, raising his voice over our din. "I haven't heard of you before. You new in New York?"
"Nah, mate," Jules cackled. "We've been 'round a while."
"I just thought, you know, with your accents..."
"What accent?" I deadpanned, in a broad Scottish brogue that would have made me mum proud.
Noah looked at me like I'd hit him in the face with a two by four. "Wait, I know you guys!'
I inhaled sharply, then pasted a smile across my face. "Yeah?" I said, as noncommittally as I could. Behind me, I heard Jules groan audibly and though I couldn't see him, I could tell that Niall was busily trying to blend in with the woodwork.
"You guys are..." he stepped further into the room, searching as if our missing lead singers were hiding in the corners or something. "But where's—"
"We're not Wrecked anymore, mate," Jules piped up with an audible snarl.
You could hear the collective outrush of breath as all three members of Sinister Affinity suddenly remembered en masse. "Oh shit man, so Killer's really not gonna play with you anymore?"
"Kind of fucking hard to do that from county lockup," Niall growled from behind us. I looked at him sharply. Our prim and proper bassist was brought up with the finest his upper class parents could give him. All etiquette lessons and boarding school manners. Hanging out with the likes of Jules and me for the past six years hadn't roughened him up as much as you'd figure. Hearing him shouting at someone was like hearing a dog say meow. He slid off the table he'd been leaning up against and walked up to Noah and I'm sure he wasn't trying to be threatening, but it's kind of hard not to be when you're six foot five. "Any more questions?"
"No, no, of course not." Noah looked pale as hell and held up his hands as he backed away from the greenroom. "Ah, we have to go warm up."
"Sounds like a plan," I enthused.
"We're big fans of Wrecked by the way," Carter, the up-to-now silent bassist piped up.
"Too bad," I said, stepping over to shut the door behind them. "Because Wrecked is over."
The door clicked closed. I pressed my hand against the battered grain of the wood and took a deep breath at the same time I heard Jules let out a low whistle. "So much for an anonymous fucking show."
I rubbed my jaw, trying to lose some of the stiffness that had set in there the moment we walked into the Third Wheel. This place was a relic from our pre-Killian days, someplace that felt like home. It had made sense to come back here for our first post-Killian show. Since we'd walked out of Crux records two weeks ago, a mutual parting of ways that left us free of any contractual obligations while also being free of the label help we were used to like booking agents and an actual honest-to-god manager, we'd been pretty much aimless. It had been Jules' idea to book under our old name, the jokey, hokey, rebellious teenaged one we'd come up with while drunk as shit in a pub back home in Newcastle. I had no idea how the Third Wheel was marketing a show by Twat Yacht and I honestly didn't care. I thought I was ready to play again, but all I wanted to do was be alone.
I had never felt more tired in my life.
"Doubt it," Niall piped up. I looked over to where he had struck a pose reminiscent of Rodin's The Thinker. It didn't feel like a slight to admit that Niall was smarter than me and Jules, it was just an objective fact, so we tended to listen whenever he made his pronouncements in his slow, quiet way.
"You don't think they're gonna blab?" Jules asked, drumming his fingers lightly on his knee.
"Think about it, why would they?" Niall say back with a grin. "As far as the audience is concerned, they're the draw. We're just some no name group of wannabes."
I hissed out a snorting laugh. "Remember how we were in Tokyo like last month?"
"Two months ago," Niall corrected.
"Whatever. My point it, we were on the top of our fucking game." I dropped back down onto the couch, sending up a cloud of old cigarette smoke. "And now we're no-names. It's not fucking right." I could feel the angry blood starting to thud in my ears. "Wrecked was always us. Ewan, Jules and Niall. Fuck, remember that old girlfriend you had back in university, Niall? She'd say our names like it was just one long word. EwanJulesandNiall."
"Actually she said NiallJulesandEwan," Niall pointed out. "Being as she was my girlfriend and all."
I smacked him in the arm. "Point being, we were a band, a real fucking band, before Killian and Jane. But now that they've left, everyone wants to pretend that's all we were. The Killian and Jane show. Like we were a fucking backing band."
"I dunno mate, we basically were?" Jules interjected. I looked at him, feeling my jaw clenching again. Jules spread his hands. "I'm right though, yeah? Towards the end there? We were just fucking coasting, mate. I know I was."
"We gave Killian way too much power," Niall agreed.
"Well, he was..."
"An asshole."
"Clearly."
"Hey Niall," Jules said. "You never finished saying what happened in Reckless Falls.”
I sat back heavily. Sensitive Niall had recently taken it upon himself to go seek out Jane in her small town home. He grimaced at the memory. "She wants nothing to do with us, mate."
"Really?" I exhaled.
"I mean, do you blame her?" Jules pointed out. "Much as we didn't know..."
"We didn't fucking know."
"Yeah but like, it's gotta hurt."
"We were like family," I seethed.
"Well she has her real family now," Niall went on. "And friends and a guy she's shacking up with at the top of a mountain. So..."
"She's done with us," Jules finished for him.
"Right."
Those words hung heavy in the air for a moment. "So it's us again," Jules finally said. "Like we're back to square one. No lead singers, no label, no manager. Just us." He shook his head, his tangle of black curls bobbing around his head in a greasy mop. I wondered how long it'd been since he'd last showered.
"Yeah but is that a bad thing?" I ventured.
Jules looked at me like I'd suddenly sprouted a second head. "Yeah mate, it's a fucking bad thing," he said, as if I'd gone daft all of a sudden. "Don't know if you remember, but six months ago we were touring with Ruthless."
"I don't know," I said slowly, sipping my forgotten beer, trying to articulate something that had been banging around in my head ever since we left Roger Blumenthal's office in a firestorm of righteous fury. "We touched the sun, and it burned us pretty bad." I took a sip of my drink, rolling it around in my mouth as I considered. "Why not go back to where we were? For real?"
Jules glared at me, that same stare down he'd perfected when we were sixteen years old. "You're saying you want to go back to being a bar band?"
"Pub band," I corrected. "Back home, away from all of," I gestured to take in this bar, this block, the entire city of New York in one gesture. "Get away from all of the badness of the past couple years."
"They weren't so bad," Niall interjected.
I turned and looked at him. "Well of course you think so," I said. "Nothing bad ever happens to you, do
es it posh boy?"
He groaned and wadded up a napkin, chucking it in my direction. "But you still have a point. I guess they were pretty shitty if you're Jane," he said.
My fist balled. "That's another reason to get the fuck out of this mess," I snarled.
Jules's head snapped up, setting his curls bobbing on his head. "You know, before Killian joined up, we were a democracy," he pointed out. "Why don't we put it up to a vote." He stood up. "I say we fight this," he said, his voice rising, I could tell he was imagining himself as William Wallace in Braveheart. "Get a new manager get a new label, get our songs out there. Our songs. Not Killian's." He looked from me to Niall. "Let's vote." He raised his hand. "I vote yes."
I looked at him, grim-faced, feeling like I was letting him down but honestly, my heart wasn't in it. "No," I said. "Sorry mate. We play this show because we agreed to do it, but after it, I'm done."
Jules' eyes flashed at me, and then he turned to our bassist. "Niall you need to fucking vote," he demanded.
I leaned back on the couch. Niall was shy as hell, the kind of stammering, stuttering stereotype of an Englishman that Hugh Grant personified in the 90s. I didn't think guys like him actually existed until he'd stammered his way through his introduction back six years ago when he met me and Jules in the pub in Newcastle. I would've told him to piss off, upper-class twit that he was, except he could play the hell out of every instrument he laid his hands on, and we needed a bassist like nothing else. He was the steady heartbeat of our group, quiet and not showy about anything, standing in the corner and giving the bottom to our songs. But he was shy as hell, and didn't go in for the whole rockstar life, not even when we were living it to the fullest. He was not going to go along with Jules' wild plan of getting back on top ourselves. I took another sip of my rapidly warming beer, feeling pretty confident that tonight was the end of an era that I was glad to see in their rearview mirror.
"Sorry mate," Niall piped up softly. "I gotta go with Jules on this one."
I stared at him, suddenly at a loss for words. He spread his hands and shrugged. "It's like were getting a second chance here," he said in that crisp, posh accent of his. "I want to prove we're not a one-hit wonder." He looked up at Jules. "I'm in."
Both of them, my brothers, my mates, looked at me. My vision of heading back to Newcastle to live a quiet life playing the pubs again, maybe getting a fucking dog and going on hikes, roaming the hillsides of my green and much missed homeland dissipated before my eyes.
Because as much as I hated them right now, I couldn't let these guys down.
"Fine," I said, "Fuck you. I guess I'm in."
Chapter Three
Celia
"How do you do these things?" I marveled as I followed August back to the quiet, roped off area in the back.
She shrugged and sat down. "I just talked to the booking guy," she said, waving her hand dismissively. "Explained that you work for Anthem..."
I grinned and shook my head in awe. Being friends with August was a never-ending lesson in chutzpah. Sometimes I wondered if I would have turned out like her if I'd grown up differently. Everything was always handed to me, so I'd never needed to bother asking for it. "So you name dropped? I thought you were above that."
August grinned over her drink. "I didn't tell him who you were. I just told him you were an A&R scout for Anthem and he practically fell over himself to accommodate us." She stretched out in her chair, pointing and flexing her toes and fluffing out the mane of red curls that bounced on top of her head like it was alive and had a mind of its own. "I could get used to this."
I smiled, looking out into the cramped general admission area. The place was about three-quarters full and I silently wondered if August's boyfriend's band really had this kind of drawing power. Were these Sinister Affinity fans or were they here for the terribly named headliner? "Hey!" I shouted over the sudden sound of applause as the houselights dimmed. "Who is Noah opening for again?"
But at that moment, August jumped to her feet, loudly whistling as her boyfriend and his band slumped their way onto the tiny, cramped stage.
I sat back in my comfortable chair and tried to mentally prepare myself to approach this with an open mind. No matter how annoying Noah was on a personal level, he had somehow managed to draw a crowd. I needed to approach tonight from a business frame of mind. Maybe there was something about Sinister Affinity that I had missed.
August shot me a grin, her eyes full of wild, drunken love and I raised my drink. "Woo!" I shouted, nodding at her. "Rock on!" Her enthusiasm was infectious and I started clapping like they were the second coming of Led Zeppelin.
But the second they crashed into their first song, the grin died away from my face.
"Oh," I muttered under my breath. "Oh my god this is awful."
The three guys onstage shambled their way around a cover of a Ruthless tune, rendering it nearly unrecognizable. They were a half a beat off from each other, and whoever set up their sound system seemed to only worry about getting them as loud as possible. They sounded like a muddied, mishmash of noise and even August's rapt expression of adoration became strained.
Up in the front, only the drunkest fans were slam-dancing. The rest of the crowd stood as if rooted to the spot. I saw a few little clumps of people turn away from the disaster unfolding in front of them and slink towards the exits.
Dear God, if this mess was the opening band, how terrible were the headliners? Twat Yacht? What was I thinking coming here tonight?
"They sound a little off!' August shouted worriedly in my ear.
"I think it's the sound mix," I said charitably.
I could see her face crash down into irritation. "I told Noah they needed a new sound guy like yesterday," she yelled.
"I take it he didn't listen to you?"
"He says it's fine," she said, sounding more pissed than I would have expected.
"He should have listened to you," I told her, trying to stay diplomatic.
Her brown eyes blazed in the dark of the bar. "Yeah," she said, turning back to glare at the stage. "He should have."
"I'm going to go get more drinks," I said, backing away. She nodded, still fixing Noah with a look that should have killed him on the spot.
The bar was in the far left corner, under the balcony, and mercifully shielded from the worst of the noise onstage. I ordered one of the sloe gin fizzes that August was currently obsessed with. "And just a shot of Johnnie Walker Black, for me," I told the refrigerator-sized bartender.
He raised one eyebrow and I knew what he was thinking. My petite size was just one more roadblock in the uphill battle to be taken seriously that I fought on a daily basis. I knew I looked like a kid and that along with my status as "Ricky Silver's little girl" meant I was forever feeling like a twelve-year old playing pretend in the grown-up world.
"Can I see some ID?" the bartender asked.
I sighed. His other eyebrow went up as I slid my hand into my bra to retrieve my license. I lifted my chin in challenge as I held it up for him to see. "I'll be twenty-three next month," I declared. "See?"
"Okay Cecelia."
"Just Celia."
"You're a Virgo," he said.
I laughed. "You're trying to trick me. You think it's a fake? August 16th. I'm a Leo."
He grinned and nodded. "Fair enough. One shot of Johnnie Walker Black, coming up."
There was a deafening crash from onstage that set my teeth on edge. "Better make it two," I called.
A few desultory whoops and a smattering of applause, most of it coming from the direction of August's roped off section, and the aural assault of Sinister Affinity ground to an awkward halt. "Good night New York!" Noah screamed into the mic like he was closing down Madison Square Garden. I cringed and rushed back to August's side.
"Here," I said, holding out her too-sweet drink.
She looked vaguely shell-shocked. "Thanks," she said and proceeded to knock back half. "Didn't you get one of your Hank Williams drinks?"
>
I grinned. August claimed I had the same taste in drinks as a grizzled old country singer. I held up two fingers. "It's called Johnnie Walker, not Hank Williams, and I've had two shots thank you." I swayed a little, enjoying the relative silence as the set changed. "Got a nice buzz going on for Twat Yacht," I said, wincing at the name.
August wrinkled her nose. "You wanna stay for them? I mean, Noah's probably backstage, we can head back there and hang out."
The idea of being trapped in a tiny green room with Noah was distasteful on a good day. Having to sit there and pretend for August's sake that the show had been anything other than an unmitigated disaster was something I couldn't even contemplate right now. "Let's just see what they're all about," I said, pinning a big enthusiastic smile on my face. "I mean, aren't you at least a little curious about who the heck would name their band Twat Yacht?"
August seemed a little relieved. "Oh for sure," she said, settling back into her chair. "They're probably a bunch of kids who think they're clever." She shot me an evil grin. "You know you want to sign them."
"Please," I cried, rolling my eyes. I was feeling more than a little buzzed by now. "I'd rather die. Can you imagine me walking into Anthem right now and trying to get them to sign Twat Yacht? I'd be shooting my career in the foot before it even started."
August was snorting into her drink. "What the hell kind of name is that?" she wondered, shaking her head. "I'd like to meet their manager."
"To smack them in the head?" I asked. But whatever answer she was about to give was drowned out by the cacophony of applause that suddenly roared up from the front.
"What the hell?" I muttered, standing back up and craning my neck. Everyone in front of me was on their feet, shouting and pogoing in place and completely blocking my view. I couldn't see who had walked onstage.
But all at once I could hear.
A pure wave of sound hit me full in the face, traveling down my spine to make my toes curl in my boots. I felt my mouth fall open as the music began to build...