Tough Luck (Hard Rock Roots) (15 page)

I spin my sticks in my fingers.

One, two, three.

I hit that shit with a fast blast beat, murdering my kit while Turner bends over into a scream. No words, just an explosion of pain and hate. 'Been There, Fuck That'. It's from our first album, and it's been a hell of a long time since we played it live, but Turner made the decision to go for it before we took the stage. Nobody argued, not even Josh. Kind of surprising since the song doesn't mean shit to him. When we originally recorded this tune, it was with Travis in tow.
Fuck man, I sure do miss your ass.

“
Your suffering screams to me, but I don't hear it anymore. ANY-MORE!
” Turner bites the last word off with a growl, spinning on his good leg, letting himself get wrapped up in the cord from foot to fucker. “
Can't find your fucking face in a crowd. Wouldn't want to even try!
” I close my eyes and ignore the pain in my arms. To be honest, it feels fucking delicious. Man, if I could've, I probably would've killed that piece of shit. Not just for what he said to me, but for the way he treated Lola. I know all about that.

Sweat slicks my face as I pummel the drums like I'm trying to fuck the shit out of 'em.
Come for me, baby,
I think as Treyjan stomps the stage, taking advantage of Turner's injury to draw a little more attention to himself. Jesse follows along, dark hair flying as he grinds into his axe. Even Josh seems to be into this shit. But hey, who doesn't love a song about Turner's miserable crack whore of a mother?

A show is exactly what we all need tonight, something to get away from the bullshit, an alternative universe where nothing exists but this. My foot pumps a heavy rhythm while the lights above us shift, bathing me in color, cloaking me darkness. Normally, I just sit back and do my thing, ignore it all.

But not tonight.

Tonight, I just can't. I feel so … pumped up, like I've gone on a run and slammed a whole fuckload of dope. I'm a Goddamn superhero up here, and I haven't had a single hit tonight. I haven't even had a fucking
beer.
I pause, resting in this heavy space, my arms tingling, my heart beating a rhythm my drums are begging me to repeat. I want to play that sound in my chest and see if anyone hears it, if anyone else knows what I'm trying to say with a crash cymbal choke and a bass drum. My eyes find Lola again, see her standing at the edge of the stage clutching the curtains with tight fingers. Even in this lighting, even with the crowd screeching like a flock of crows, I can still hear the sound of her heart. It's not possible. It shouldn't be. Even if it was fucking silent as death in here, I shouldn't be able to hear it. But I do. I do, and I don't know why.

Asuka,
I begin, waiting for that spark of posthumous wisdom I seem to have no trouble drumming up.
I'm falling for a girl I just met. The fuck is up with that?

“
I pray for your death with every breath. I wish you all ill will, every prick and screw, every man that blew through like a hurricane. But the worst one of all was you.
”

Time to pick up the growling. When we record, Turner does all the vocals. Onstage, it's not possible to mimic the overlapping, the layering that goes on in the studio.

“
Was YOU!
” I snarl into my mic, blending my gravelly voice with Trey's and Jesse's. Only Josh stays silent. My knee's bouncing up and down like a kid on crack, and my arms are moving so fast they're a blur.

“
The scars of your deceit still haunt me, but the rage that you kept has only made me better.
”

I take a rimshot, striking the center of the snare drum and catching the rim with the fat part of my stick. Sounds dirty, doesn't it? Well, baby, it
is.
This song is so fucking fucked, I feel like I'm being pulled under a spell.

So does the crowd apparently. They don't even look like people anymore, just a wave of howling mouths and wild hair, a tidal surge of emotions and desperation. Rock. It's the sound of lost souls, and we're calling them home. If you do it right though, you make sure they never get there, that they drift on the surface of the earth hoping for that last bridge to carry them through. Each song, each beat, each chord is there to entice them back to us, bring them to Indecency for their next hit. I'd feel bad if it didn't feel so damn good. Music's an extension of the soul and right now, mine's not sitting stagnant, steeping in shit. It's out there touching every single person here, brushing along the fringes of humanity and taking their emotions as souvenirs.
Hate, love, pain, pleasure, rage, peace.
I feel it all flowing into me, cutting through the floor and clawing at my boots like the hands of zombies reaching for a taste of life. Trey is swinging his head in a circle, stomping the floor with his foot. The sound of his guitar is like the cry of a demon, smashing us all in the skull with decay and desperation.

Turner can't do his usual parlor tricks tonight, so he makes up for it with a voice that's extra pure, that carries over the screaming fans and shuts them down. The mosh pit whirls like a washer on a spin cycle, churning bodies around, clearing a hole in the center of the muck.

My sticks become extensions of my arms, indistinguishable from my flesh, just another bit of me to slam out and stir air molecules, vibrate the world and the hearts of the desperate and lost, hearts like mine, hearts that have been so fucked they can barely pump blood to the brain anymore.

Hear me, Asuka?
I ask.
Do you hear this? This agony I feel is for you, this love I feel was all yours. It's all bottled up, and I have nowhere to put it.

I drain myself out across the drums, bleed that wicked heart pain dry, and wait for a response.

“
Ronnie.
” I hear my name, but the voice that's speaking to me isn't Asuka's. It's Lola's.

I glance over at her again, knowing that she's not really speaking, just as her heart really isn't beating loud enough to compete with the speakers flanking us like soldiers. I'm just
feeling
her, sensing her like she's on a fucking radar in my head.

Lola sees me looking and leans against the curtain for support, hanging on it like there's a heavy weight around her shoulders, dragging her down. Her tongue moves over her lips, and I see the rise and fall of her chest as she sighs. I can't look away; I'm possessed. I stare at her, get caught on her eyes. They're big and round and open. I feel like I could fall in them and drown, suck in lungfuls of water and thank the universe for the chance to die there. Her mouth is so full and curved, like a fucking strawberry or some shit. I feel my pants getting tight, my dick rising up like a protest.

The song switches gears, the lyrics shifting from Turner's hatred of his mother to the desperate need he felt to be someone better, his dreams for the future. The song might be a decade old, but it's more true today than it ever was for him. I won't lie – I'm envious as shit. I
want
that, that hope, that naive longing for tomorrow. I want to make plans that won't come true and have a good time trying. I want to think about what happens
when I grow up.
I want to stop planning my funeral and start planning my fucking wedding.

I want to find a girl who thinks I'm worth something and fall in love again.

Sweat drips into my eyes, obscuring my vision, but I don't look away. I let the sound of my kit tickle my bones and stroke my cock with punk ass melodies and rock hard phrases. Lola stares straight back at me, mouths some words I can't hear.

“
I won't make my children cry or tear their hearts apart. I won't watch them die inside and smoke away their dreams. 14962, the trailer park from nowhere, can't catch up to me. I'm searching far away, and my love can outrun anything.
”

The song starts to wind down, and my arms rejoin this dimension, dropping into a steady beat that actually exists on this plane of existence. I prefer that demon fast fuck 'em up, bring 'em down crazy ass blast beat, but this is okay, too. Lola reaches inside her coat and comes up with a glass bottle, raising it to me like a toast, and then she presses it to her lips and swallows.

After our set, I stumble off the stage dripping, my shirt sticking to my back and chest. Jesse's patting my shoulder and shaking his head.

“Fucking awesome today, man. I haven't heard you play like that since – ” A pause. We both know what he's thinking; nobody needs to say it. I'm not the only person who's been carrying around a ghost all these years. My friends have been living with her, too.

“Thanks,” I tell him, swiping at my forehead with a towel and looking around for Lola. I should probably call over to the hotel and see how Lydia's doing, but I figure Milo's most likely already texting Turner's phone, trying to find out what horrible things he's said and done. I watch my friend saunter off the stage like he doesn't have a care in the world, and then stumble as soon as he crosses that line from public to private. Treyjan catches him before he can hit the floor and props him up with an arm around the waist. One of the roadies grabs a chair and makes a show of biting her lip and touching his arm as she helps him sit down.
Bitch don't stand a chance.

“Don't tell Milo.” First thing that's out of Turner's mouth. He leans against the back of the chair and sighs. If I thought I was sweaty, he's wetter than a whore in Vegas. Fucking Christ. I move over to him and try to check his forehead, but he swats my hand away with a scowl. “Don't fucking touch me. I'm fine.” I put my hands on my hips and look at him, really look at him.

“Don't make me tell Naomi,” I say, trying not to smile. Turner's eyes open a little wider then and he glances up at me with a weird look on his face, like he's trying to see if I'm kidding around or not. “Let the medic check you out, and I'll keep my mouth shut,” I say, and he scowls. Turner and the medic have this … thing. It goes way back to our last tour when the guy caught him fucking his wife. Since then, they just haven't gotten along. Imagine that? But the guy refuses to quit, and Milo likes him, keeps hiring him on. He won't admit it, but I think Terrabotti finds some secret joy in watching Turner squirm around the dude. The man's like 6' 7" with biceps the size of my thighs. Eh, even I have to admit there's something funny about the situation. The guy's real nice to me anyway. Couple times I almost OD'd in the bathrooms of different venues, and he was there with a shot of Narcan. Worst. Fucking. Experiences. Ever. Other than Asuka, of course. Imagine a shot that throws you into full-blown withdrawals. Yeah, that was a fuckload of fun. But the dude never mentioned it to anyone. Maybe that's why Milo likes him? We're an unconventional group of assholes, so we need an unconventional medic.

I shrug my shoulders and roll my head around my neck to loosen up. Now that the high of the show is over, my arms and knuckles are throbbing like hell. Normally, I'd go smoke, snort, or slam something to get over it. Today, I get ibuprofen. I bend down by Milo's little 'care kit' thing that he drags around like some eighty year old grandma, and dig out the pills and a bottled water while Jesse fetches the medic.

I put the pills in my mouth and swallow, trying not to think of all the other amazing things I could be having instead. Something with hydrocodone or oxycodone. I close my eyes tight and try to find something else to hold onto, something to keep from repeating mistakes of the past. There's so much going on here, so much that's at risk. This crap that keeps happening to us, some of it's gotta be coincidence. I mean, come on, nobody can plan a friggin' tornado. But the rest is all too calculated. There has got to be master plan somewhere, something that we can knock off course and destroy. Can't do that if I'm stumbling around knocking up girls and praying I don't get my ass thrown in jail.

I get out a cigarette and look around, searching for Lola again. I wish I'd gotten to see her open the show for us. Milo was keeping us locked up like dogs in a kennel. If I'd been in here to see, I might've been able to predict her mood. Music doesn't lie. It might tell stories sometimes, but the emotion that's there is as pure as it gets. Is she mad at me for beating up her ex? Or did I scare the shit out of her by going mental?

“You trying to touch my dick?” Turner snaps, slapping the gloved hand away from his bloody thigh. The medic – fuck if I can remember his name – rolls his eyes and shakes his head, ripping Turner's jeans open a little wider, so he can take a closer look. Typical Turner. Can't be bothered to take off his jeans. He'd rather slice 'em open with a box cutter. Where that even came from, I don't want to know.

I smoke my cigarette and search around the room full of people. No way we can leave right now. Too many people outside. Might as well be surrounded by hordes of flesh eating zombies. I know men don't often get raped, but I'm pretty sure the first member of our band to walk out there would end up severely violated. By fangirls. I shiver.

I exhale and wait, certain that I'll find the pint-sized little shit any second now. I want to know what she thought of my playing, if she's pissed about Cohen, and I want to hear whatever it is that she wanted to tell me. Then we've got some unfinished business to take care of. I reach down and run a hand surreptitiously over my crotch.
Fuck.
It's throbbing, drawing blood from my body like an antenna, broadcasting my desire all over the fucking place. I feel bad for the people that are trying to squeeze past me, bumping against my arms and chest. Might as well be jizzing all over them for shit's sake. I can't stop touching my hair and running my tongue across my lips.
Lola.
My chest rises and falls as I stand there, getting more panicky by the second. Did she slip out somehow? Now that I think about it, I actually don't see
any
members from Ice and Glass. Maybe they left already?
Fuck.