Seductive Chaos (Bad Rep #3) (23 page)

I didn’t know what went down except through secondhand knowledge. I had no idea what it was like on the road with Cole. But I did know that he had been friends with the three guys sat in front of me for years. They had built a band and created music together. They had started a journey together and there were always two sides to every story.

Given my recent anger towards Cole, I was surprised with how quickly my heart and mind had jumped to his defense.

“I think the same could be said for everyone. Don’t you think?” I asked, chugging the rest of my beer and putting my empty bottled on the ground by my feet.

“You don’t know what you’re talking about, Viv. You, of all people should know exactly what we were dealing with. How you can sit there and be all morally disapproving when not two weeks ago you were telling Cole to take a hike,” Jordan threw at me and I knew he was right.

But. . .

“I just think it’s sort of screwed up that you’re placing everything on his shoulders. Cole can be a handful but he’s still a part of this band. So where is he?” I asked, giving each of the remaining members of Generation Rejects a pointed look.

“At his apartment, I guess,” Mitch shrugged.

“Why isn’t he here? Why aren’t the four of you
figuring shit out?”

“Vivian, this really isn’t any of your business,” Maysie remarked firmly, narrowing her eyes.

“You’re right, it’s totally none of my business. Maybe that’s why it’s easier for me to see how messed up it really is,” I suggested.

Mitch snorted. “Oh please. As if you’re an unbiased party.”

I crossed my arms over my chest, accepting the barb but not letting it go without my own.

“And I think your heads are too far up your own asses to see anything clearly. It looks to me like Cole’s wasn’t the only ego that was the problem.” I dropped my words like a bomb. I got to my feet and picked up my empty beer bottle and started to walk toward the kitchen.

“You got anything to drink besides beer?” I asked over my shoulder, more than aware of the looks everyone was tossing my way. But I didn’t care. I said what needed to be said.

“Uh, there’s some vodka I think,” Jordan offered and I smirked at the befuddlement in his voice.

I could tell I had made him think. That I had made all of them think. And even though Cole would never know I had stuck up for him, I knew I had to say something.

And my feelings had nothing to do with it.

I had become really good at convincing myself of just about anything.

I
thought I was going to be sick. My stomach started to clench and my mouth began to water.

I had exactly ten seconds to make it to my bathroom before I threw up all over myself.

I stumbled out of my bed, tripping over the empty bottle of Everclear on the floor and made it to the toilet just in time.

I hated to puke. And I had been doing a lot of that for the past couple of hours. I felt like shit. Every part of my body ached. My head felt like someone was drilling a hole straight through my temples.

That’s what I got for picking up a crate of liquor on the way home from the airport and proceeded to drink myself into a stupor.

The flight back from Chicago had been tense. I hadn’t shared more than two words with any of my bandmates. A wall had been put up between them and me.

I was pissed. I was hurt. I was full of crazy fucking rage.

I had paid out the ass for a cab to take me all the way back to Bakersville. It was a hell of a lot better than riding back in Garrett’s van.

I asked the driver to drop me off at the liquor store, where I proceeded to buy my weight in alcohol. I then went to my shitty apartment, a place I honestly had hoped to never see again, and drank my way into a coma.

It had seemed like such a good idea at the time.

Now, not so much.

My phone started to ring and I couldn’t do much more than moan as the sound bounced around my cell.

“Shut up,” I whispered hoarsely from my fetal position on my bathroom floor.

It listened, thank god, and the ringing stopped. I sat up and slowly got to my feet. I ran the water in the sink and filled my hands and splashed my face several times. It cleared some of the fog in my head.

I smelled like shit. That was definitely vomit on the front of my shirt. I looked at my reflection in the mirror and had to laugh. I was a long cry from being the sexed up bad boy singer everyone was used to seeing.

I looked like crap. Like a heroine addict before they overdosed in an alleyway. My cheeks were sunken and I had dark circles under my eyes. Despite feeling like asshole warmed over, I had enough residual vanity to make myself strip my clothes and jump in the shower.

Being clean helped to clear my head. I was hung-over as hell and I knew I needed to get something to eat. But the thought of leaving my apartment and going out
there,
out where people would know me and want to talk to me, seemed like a really bad idea.

The last thing I needed in my general state of suckitude, was to try and make conversation with anyone.

My phone started ringing again.

Obviously the person on the other end didn’t understand that I was super busy wallowing in pathetic self-pity.

I picked up the source of my annoyance and went to hit ignore when I saw who it was.

Jose Suarez.

Figuring ignoring my manager wouldn’t be in my best interest right now; I put the phone to my ear.

“Hello?”

“Where the fuck have you been? I’ve been calling you since yesterday!” Jose demanded.

“Man, lower your voice!” I croaked, rubbing my temples. I needed some ibuprophen stat!

“I don’t give a shit if you’ve been run over by a damn bus, you answer the phone when I call you!” he ordered and I flipped him off, though he couldn’t see me.

“Yeah, yeah. Okay, what’s the emergency?” I yawned and even that simple movement made me feel like I was going to throw up again. I was a fucking mess.

“Are you screwing with me?
What’s the emergency
? Well except for the fact that your career is in the shitter, nothing really,” Jose bit out sarcastically.

Oh, yeah. There was
that.

“Sorry, I didn’t mean it like it sounded,” I apologized.

“I’m getting the impression that not a lot of shit sorting is going on down in east bumblefuck, or wherever it is that you fuckers live,” Jose snarled.

I really needed some ibuprophen. And I needed to stop tasting my stomach lining in the back of my throat.

“Have you spoken to the other guys?” he asked and I shook my head. Oh right, he couldn’t see me.

“Nope.” My mouth popped around the word for emphasis.

“You planning to talk to them?” he asked snidely.

“I guess,” I said petulantly.

“You guess. Huh. Well that doesn’t sound much like someone who’s invested in saving his band,” Jose pointed out. He didn’t sound angry about it. Just thoughtful. And thoughtful Jose was kind of scary.

“I don’t know if it’s worth saving anymore. If they think it’s okay to walk off stage and leave me like that, I’m not sure I want to play music with them anymore.” And there I had said it. It was the thing that had been swirling around in my head since the entire concert fiasco.

I was bitter. I was really freaking bitter. And my feelings were hurt. I could admit that what my friends had done had cut me deep.

And maybe I was making decisions based on emotions, but I couldn’t think past it. I wasn’t sure we would ever be able to get to a place where we would be able to move passed our hurt pride.

There was a lot of ugliness between the four of us right now.

“I hear ya. I really do. So maybe now is a good time to talk about some news I have for you,” Jose said and I figured I needed to be sitting down for whatever he had to tell me.

“News?” I asked, rooting around in my medicine cabinet for pain reliever. The throbbing in my head had started to get worse. My brains were starting to liquefy.

“Yeah, so I was talking to my man, Roberto, who works over at Deep Hill Records,” he began and my ears perked up.

“Deep Hill Records? Are you shitting me? They’re one of the biggest labels out there,” I said, stopping my scavenger hunt in my medicine cabinet as Jose got all of my attention.

“No shit, Sherlock. Deep Hill is the big leagues. Pirate Records is great and all but they’re young. They’re still a starter company. They don’t have a lot in the way of reach or overall capital. Deep Hill, however, could launch your name into the universe. And they’re interested, Cole. Really fucking interested.”

I sat down heavily on the toilet seat and tried to get a breath. I couldn’t quite figure out what Jose was telling me.

“What do you mean they’re interested?” I asked, feeling like a total idiot.

“It means they want to see more from you. Just you. My man is a head A&R dude. He’s been in this industry since the late nineties. And he thinks you have something, Cole. He thinks you could be huge. He wants to talk to you about what Deep Hill could do for you. About working on an album.”

Jose’s words were going in one ear and out the other. I couldn’t grasp what he was telling me. It was all a little too much for me to take in right now.

I felt like death.

My friends had abandoned me.

My band was on the edge of total ruin.

And Jose was saying that a guy at Deep Hill Records thought I could be a star.

I was going to be sick.

“I’m gonna have to call you back,” I whispered, bile building up in the back of my throat.

“We need to talk about this now, Cole. My guy isn’t going to wait around forever. I know you have your sit down with Pirate next week. But you need to think long and hard about what you’re going to go in there and say. And if it were me, I’d say fuck it. Do what you have to do to get out of that contract. I’ve been reading over it and there are stipulations where you could be released without financial penalties. We need to talk about your strategy. Because I want to help you go beyond Generation Rejects. Cole, this is your chance to go all the way, man!”

I started to sweat.

The words
terminate your contract
and
go beyond Generation Rejects
buzzed in my ears. My stomach flipped over and I dropped the phone on the cold tile as I leaned over the toilet and retched.

J
ose didn’t stay on the line after that. And I didn’t bother to call him back. I couldn’t handle his great ideas for my future right now.

I was so fucking confused.

When I thought it was safe to leave my bathroom, I headed out to my living room and sat down on my couch. I turned on the television and was annoyed to see only static.

“Fucking hell,” I muttered, getting up and going over to mess with the cable behind the TV.

After a few minutes and with no success, I called the cable company. It seemed that my cable had been shut off. Seemed I had forgotten to pay the bill while I was on the road.

Oops.

I threw the remote control on the couch and went into my kitchen. Opening the refrigerator had been a mistake. Something had obviously crawled in there and died. And my stomach went into immediate revolt.

I slammed the door of the fridge closed and debated the intelligence of grabbing my keys and making a run for it.

Because right now, my life was shit.

And I had been doing so well.

I needed to talk to the guys. But I was feeling obstinate. And ornery. And a lot scorned bitch.

I thought back to the first time we played all together at Barton’s. We had been awesome. We had just clicked. There was something that happened between the four of us when we played together.

It was hard to describe and even harder to understand until you experienced it.

Music is what had kept me sane. After my parents kicked me out and I started floundering, it gave me a fucking purpose. It gave me something to get invested in.

And I found in it something to be proud of. I was made to be a lead singer. I lived for being up on that stage and making people want me.

So maybe I had started letting it get to my head a bit. But you tell me one person who could do what I did every single night, who could have the women throwing themselves at them, having people tell them how amazing they were, and not start to feel like maybe they were right. That you are pretty awesome.

And what was wrong with feeling good about yourself?

I had spent most of my life feeling pretty shitty about who I was. I had never been good enough. Even when I broke the school’s scoring record my junior year. Even when I was offered a scholarship. None of it mattered.

Most of the time growing up I had been pretty sure my dad had hated me. I couldn’t remember a single time he had given me a compliment or had said “Good job, Cole.”

That didn’t mean I expected sympathy. I didn’t wallow in my daddy issues and use it as an excuse to do whatever the hell I wanted.

Though it didn’t take a PH.D. to dig down to the root of my psychological issues.

For someone who had never received any positive attention from the one person I had wanted it from, being inundated with it every night, in the form of the crowd, or chicks wanting in my pants, or record labels telling me I was a star in the making, it was pretty damn addictive.