On the Road: (Vagabonds Book 2) (New Adult Rock Star Romance) (27 page)

Well, of course, I wanted my music to be what was the virtual A side, and I was sure Liz felt the same way.  In all fairness, Liz had started the band and it had been her music that had gotten us where we were today, and I should have said so right then…but I knew I’d written some amazing music, songs that I didn’t want relegated to obscurity, to what felt like the dark side of the moon.  I looked down at the table, not sure what, if anything, I should say.  But Barbie took the pause as a reason to speak.  “We gotta go with Liz’s stuff.  It’s easier for me to sing and it’s catchier, you know?  It’s the kind of shit a girl will walk through the mall singing ‘cause it’s stuck in her head.  Kyle’s is good, but it’s headbanging stuff.”  She tilted her head toward me.  “No offense.”

Well, offense was definitely taken, but I wasn’t going to say it.  This was a band decision and Barbie did, after all, have to sing the tunes.  Liz said, “Even if we decide Kyle’s stuff is going to be B side doesn’t mean you wouldn’t be singing some of them on the road, Barbie.”

I clamped my teeth down on my tongue because I saw then the writing on the wall.  Even though no one had said it as yet, they viewed my music as less marketable because it was heavier.

I was a rebel so I refused to let it hurt.  Instead, I told myself,
their loss
.  And then I fucked the shit out of CJ that night, in between swigs of schnapps and puffs of pot, to drown out the pain caused by what felt like rejection.

If only the fans had had a chance to vote.

Chapter Forty-five

IT WAS A routine I could now easily slip into, but life on the road had its own set of rules.  We didn’t pack much in the way of clothes, because we did our own laundry while on tour.  I, for one, didn’t want to pack around a shitload of dirty laundry, nor did I want to wash several loads once a week.  About every four or five days, I’d have to do a load, and we were fortunate enough to have plenty of places where we could do it.  Sure, we probably could have paid the hotels to wash our clothes, but I wasn’t feeling famous enough to demand that someone wash my dirty panties.

I didn’t know that I’d
ever
want someone else washing my underwear.

CJ and I had parted once more with our “on the road” agreement—what happened on the road stayed on the road and didn’t affect our feelings for one another.  Or so that was the plan…but it shredded my heart.

I couldn’t think about it.

And, as usual, I drowned myself in the music, in drugs and alcohol, and in sex to relieve the ache I felt…the hollow spot where thoughts of CJ should have been.

Barbie and I hardly ever talked anymore and, when we did, it was usually because we were bickering.  Liz kept to herself and so did Vicki, but for entirely different reasons.  I was surrounded by dozens of people on tour—bodyguards, a manager, assistants, a makeup and hair woman, roadies, tech crew, and my bandmates—and yet I had never felt so lonely.  When I wasn’t chemically altering my state, I was writing, pouring myself into music, the place where I always belonged.

But it was starting to feel like it wasn’t enough.

Even the weekly phone call with my parents wasn’t enough to ease the pain, because I hid my negative feelings from them.  I didn’t want them to worry, so I pretended everything was okay.

I tried focusing on positive things.  I was writing—a lot.  I was also reading a lot.  I’d talk with CJ on the phone once in a while too, but I never felt like I could talk to him as though he were my boyfriend.  We were merely friends when we were on the road, so I wouldn’t even say sexually suggestive things to him.  We kept it light and friendly.

But midway through the tour, I had had enough.  The Vagabonds might have been a band, but we were no longer sisters.  We were like strangers—and I didn’t know how to fix it.  I was angry that my music was regarded as less important and less viable, even though showcasing Liz’s music had been the decision of all of us.  And I didn’t even feel justified when our album was panned in reviews.  I couldn’t figure out why critics hated the album, and it pissed me off.  But I was also upset that the more things had changed, the more they’d stayed the same.  Vicki’s drug use was just the beginning.

Barbie was getting to be too much, and I was sick and tired of her ego.

One afternoon, the three of us were waiting for Barbie.  We were standing in the hotel lobby, hanging around until she bothered to show.  Even drugged-out Vicki managed to get the call time right and be there on time, but Barbie was nowhere to be found.  Mollie joined us, ready to go along for the ride, and asked, “Where’s Barbie?”

Liz shrugged.  “I don’t know.  I texted her a few minutes ago.”

Mollie called her and got no answer.  “Wait here.  I’ll be right back.”

I so wanted to say something but, as usual, I had to bite my tongue.  I think I got more frustrated with Barbie than the other women in our band did.  They just accepted it as part of who she was, but I felt like she didn’t care enough about us to be on time.  She didn’t care about us or the fans or anything.  It was all Barbie, Barbie, Barbie.

And I’d had enough.

Just a couple of minutes after Mollie left, Barbie showed up…and that was too bad for her.  I was done.  “So fucking glad you could grace us with your presence, Barbie.”

“Fuck off, Kyle.  It’s not like you guys left yet.”

“Yeah, because we were waiting for
your
lame ass.”

“We’re always at the venue ridiculously early.  I don’t need that much time to find my center, get right with the universe, and get my shit together so I can perform.  I just need the damn mike in my hand.”

“Bottom line, bitch—we have a call time, and you need to be here for it.”

“You’re not my boss, Kyle.  So knock it off.”

Mollie appeared in the lobby again.  “Technically, Bennett, you’re all on equal footing.  And if these girls wanted to vote you out, there’s not a damn thing you could do about it.”

It was one of the few times I’d seen Barbie speechless.  Her jaw almost dropped.  But then I saw a flash in her eyes.  “Oh, yeah?  Well…you can’t fire me, ‘cause I fucking
quit
.”  She turned on her three-inch black vinyl boots and stomped past Mollie, bumping her shoulder as she passed.  That too was a statement.

Liz and I looked at each other.  Quitting was one thing, but three hours before a show?  Liz swiped at her phone a couple of times and then lifted it to her ear.  Finally, she said, “That’s low, even for you, Barbie.”  And she hung up and looked at me.  Vicki looked ready to puke and Mollie was furiously texting—she might have been texting Barbie, but it could have been the press for all I knew.  Liz’s jaw flexed before she said, “We’ve done it before.  I could cover vocals.”

I felt my eyes widen.  “
And
bass?”  The three of us were used to singing backup to Barbie’s lead and, yeah, on our first tour, we’d muddled through a concert when she’d passed out.  I didn’t know that we could do it now.  But Liz believed in her abilities…and no way was I going to crush her spirit.  So I nodded.  “Okay.  Let’s do it.”  And, in spite of Mollie’s unspoken misgivings, we headed to the arena, ready to put on a hell of a show, with or without our insane, narcissistic lead singer. 
Ex
lead singer.

But, just as I was starting to feel positive about it, Barbie showed up—about forty-five minutes before we were expected on the stage.  When she appeared in the green room, Liz asked, “What the hell are you doing here?”

“I’m ready to work.  What’s it look like?”

“You quit, remember?”

God, Vicki looked nervous again, but I didn’t know why.  The show would go on—with or without Barbie.  The girl just had to keep the beat for us.

Liz was handling the situation just fine without my mouth getting involved, so I continued pacing near the wall like I had been.

“I was obviously just joking.”

“Hmm.  Obviously.”  Liz sucked down a deep breath of air.  “I’m tempted to tell you to get the hell out of here.  You think we need you—but we don’t.  If you stay…it’s with the knowledge that we
don’t
need you.  We’re fine without you.  You want to be the voice of the Vagabonds?  Then grow the hell up, Barbie.  I’m sick of your shit.”

I had to jump in then.  “Make that two of us.”

Vicki crossed her arms over her chest and nodded.  “Yeah.”

Barbie almost looked hurt but then jutted out her chin and walked out of the room.  We didn’t know if she’d walked again until we were all four onstage.  But she performed only.  There was no conversation, no friendly banter.  And she begged the audience for love, as if trying to show us how important she was.

It didn’t matter how vital she thought she was.  She’d been willing to walk away, and that was all I needed to know.  And even she couldn’t help our flailing album get better reviews.

Early critiques of our album described the music as “schizophrenic” and “indecisive,” but later ones simply called the music “overdone” and “boring.”  Neither Liz nor I pointed the finger, but she thought we needed to keep a “steadier” sound on the road.

“What do you mean?”

“Well…kind of like how our singles are one sound?  Maybe touring needs to sound that way too.”

And thus began the downward spiral, because my music stopped being played.  I began feeling like no one liked what I’d written and I began drinking more, fretting more.  I almost even stopped believing in myself…until one night a few weeks later.  I was sitting alone in my hotel room, drinking whiskey one shot at a time and plucking at my guitar strings.  Some stupid movie was playing on the TV, but it was just background noise.  My head was leaning against the headboard.  I was waiting for merciful sleep to overtake me.

And then I saw my phone light up.  I glanced over and saw that it was CJ.  Just seeing a text from him made me smile. 
Hey, pretty lady.  How’s it going?

Oh.  No way could I tell him how I was really feeling. 
I’m okay.  How are you?

My phone rang less than a minute later.  “What’s wrong, Kyle?”

“Why do you think something’s wrong?”

“I
know
you.  So spit it out.”

I was quiet for a moment and then just poured it all out, telling him about our reviews and the direction the band was taking.  “I’m not going to be happy if all I play is this bubblegum shit.”

“You ever think about doing a side project?”

I considered it for a few moments.  “No.  I wouldn’t have time.”  That was true.  While lots of other bands had long hiatuses, we never did.  We had a little downtime between albums, but, for the most part, we worked our asses off, leaving no time for the grass to grow under our feet.

“Just a thought.  And, maybe if you tell your bandmates that this new direction is killing you, they’ll
make
time for you to do a side project…you know, something to feed your soul.”  It was at that moment that I realized what a poet CJ was—for him to know and feel what I was going through meant a lot.

Maybe a conversation with my bandmates
was
in order…because CJ had hit the nail on the head.  I felt like my soul was dying.

Chapter Forty-six

WE HAD TWO months of tour left in the U.S., followed by a month-long leg in Europe.  It was time to have that conversation that CJ had suggested.  I wasn’t going to discuss it with the whole band, though.  Barbie was loving the music Liz had written (and she’d been quite vocal about the fact that she didn’t much like the harder music I’d written anyway), and Vicki…well, Vicki couldn’t have contributed to a conversation about an apple at that point.  Harsh, yes, but she was too far gone.

So I asked Liz if she was up for coffee and a chat and, of course, she was.  As we walked down the street to a little hometown coffee shop (so different from all the Starbucks we’d grown accustomed to but no less welcome), Liz said, “What’s been bothering you, Kyle?”

I forced a smile.  “That’s what I want to talk to you about.”

We walked in the door of the shop, immediately noticing the stuffiness.  It was a little too warm in there—appreciated at first when walking in from the cool fall air—but it felt oppressive quickly.  We were trying to ignore that, instead whiffing in the smell of roasted coffee beans and baked breakfast muffins.

Soon, though, we were sitting at a little table near the door (where the occasional customers coming and going relieved some of the unbearable heat in the room), biting into muffins and sipping lattes.  I was focusing on peeling the paper off the gigantic muffin but I said, “I haven’t been enjoying myself lately as much as I used to.”

“Yeah.  You’ve always seemed to love touring more than the rest of us.”

I nodded and looked up.  “Please don’t take offense at this, Liz, but it’s the music.”

She was rotating her cup between her fingers as it sat on the table—it was an absentminded gesture, but I got the feeling she wasn’t ready to drink the beverage.  “What do you mean?”

“You write great music—don’t get me wrong—but not being able to play my music is killing me.”

She was quiet for a good half a minute before she spoke…and then I knew her words were well-chosen.  “But you’ve been playing my songs for several years before this.  Why is it bothering you
now
?”

We hadn’t been playing any of my songs on the tour like we’d planned.  That was just the start of it, but that wasn’t the main reason.  “We’re only playing a couple of our old songs.  We’re mostly playing the new stuff.  And we’ve become a lot more mainstream, Liz.  It feels like we’ve sold out.”

Her brow furrowed as she invested her attention in her cup again.  “We
haven’t
sold out, Kyle.  If we had, we’d still be writing and playing music that sounded like our first album.”

I clenched my jaw at her half-lie.  She and I both knew that was mostly bullshit, because I didn’t know that Liz
could
write stuff like that anymore.  We’d grown too much as a band, learned too much about music and what sounded good—even what resonated with fans.  She could no more go back and write music like she had at sixteen and seventeen than she could wear the clothes she’d worn at age five.  It was next to impossible.

“Maybe we haven’t actually sold out, but it feels that way…but we’re not actually gleaning any new fans like we’d expected.”  I was skirting around the other issue, which was that
none
of our fans seemed to like this album—well, the diehard ones, yeah, but overall we’d been panned pretty badly for this album.  I wasn’t going to tell Liz her music sucked—and I didn’t necessarily feel that way—but I was tired of playing it.  “But that’s beside the point.  The songs…I don’t know why, but they’re depressing the hell out of me—and it’s not because they’re not mine.  There’s just something about them that makes me sad.”

Liz continued twisting her cup while I pinched off a bit of muffin that, as I stared at it, I realized I didn’t want to eat.  I had no appetite.  We sat there for quite some time in silence, while I wondered what the hell was happening in Liz’s head.  All that quiet grew quite heavy until she finally said, “Because they’re
mine
?”

I blinked, realizing she’d finally spoken.  I was going to pop off an answer, insisting that no, it wasn’t for that reason (and I’d just said as much), but maybe it was.  Maybe I was depressed because I’d been pushed to the back burner.  So I replied, “I don’t know.”

This was one of those times I hated how hard it was to read Liz.  All these years and I still couldn’t get a bead on her sometimes.  “What about them is bothering you?”

I looked down at her fingers loosely wound around her cup and gave her question a lot of thought.  It wasn’t the words; Liz was a powerful poet and always had been.  She was the modern equivalent of what I imagined beatnik poets to be like:  Original.  Unusual.  Creative.  Against the grain.

But then I knew…almost as if the heavens had parted and shone down on me with the answer.

It was the music.  And, God, when compared with the beauty and depth of Liz’s words, it sounded shallow.  I wasn’t sure how to explain it, but I realized in that moment that I was what others would later dub a
music snob
.  I didn’t have that term to grab hold of then, but I struggled to explain.  “I don’t know how to put it, Liz, except to say that…”  I paused.  I needed to go gingerly, and I was instead getting ready to trample.  “You know how your tastes develop as you mature…and sometimes you don’t know why you like something?  Like…I always remember getting ice cream cones with my mom and dad.  My dad always got vanilla, and mom and I always got chocolate.  I thought,
Why the hell would you get vanilla when chocolate’s available?
  Dad told me vanilla was his favorite.  I just didn’t get that when I was little.  Now that I’m older, though…I know we all have different things we like—and not everyone likes chocolate as much as I do.  Other women don’t like the same kinds of guys I do or clothes or food.”  I paused.  “What kind of coffee did you get?”

“Vanilla latte.”  She almost smiled.  “I suppose you got a mocha.”

I too almost smiled but couldn’t quite bring myself to do it…because of what I had to say next.  “Yeah.”  I sighed.  “My point is that—well, I love a song based first on the music.  I hope you know that I respect the hell out of you as both a lyricist and a musician, and you are beyond talented.”  I almost said
but
when I realized that might be the worst thing to say, so instead I said, “I’m drawn to a song by how it makes me feel—not the words.  Words in a song don’t affect me like words in a book.  It’s the music first, and the music fills me with emotion—sometimes it’s hope or happiness or anger or love but sometimes it’s sadness.  And I think there’s a reason for every song, and I love that a song can move me like that.  I’m never amazed at how my favorite songs can pull me out of the depths.  And I’ve always been that way.  I have no way of knowing how I’m going to feel about a song just by looking at the notes on paper.  I have to listen to it, let it infuse my soul, and I usually have to hear it several times before I know if I love it or not.”  I looked Liz straight in the eyes then, because I wanted her to know I was down to the innermost part of me.  “Just because I don’t love the music on this album doesn’t mean I don’t love or respect
you
, Liz.  It’s an emotional connection, one that I can’t change.”

And then it felt like someone opened the refrigerator door.  I’d never sensed such a coldness from Liz before, but it was clear to me that she hadn’t taken my words well.  To this day, I don’t know any other way I could have said it or worded it and I don’t know that I could have been more sensitive.  I do know this:  Liz gave me a cursory answer, said we needed to get back, and suggested that
maybe
we could look at a different tactic for the next album.

I couldn’t quite pinpoint it, but I knew I’d hurt Liz—deeply and irrevocably and in a way she might never have recovered from…I’d never know for sure, because she never talked about it.

But I already knew what Liz was thinking deep down, and even though we still had a few months of tour left, it was clear—this was the beginning of the end.