Page 11 of Over You
“He’s outta of his mind. Look at him.”
“Fuk-aw,” I mumbled.
“He can’t even talk,” Leo said. “We’ve gotta do something. We can’t just. . .” His voice faded into oblivion, mixing with the hum of unconsciousness.
Ah!Thatwas the feeling I’d been chasing—nothingness.
Their voices bounced around the inside of my head, eventually turning into the theme song to Super Mario Brothers. That was the thing about mixing a shit-ton of drugs and alcohol, I never knew what the result would be. This concoction. . .hallucinations. I was in the middle of a jungle with monkeys whose leader tried, unsuccessfully, to shove a banana in my mouth. That angered them, and my body went weightless when the little fuckers hiked me onto their shoulders and carted me off.
And then it was ripped right away. The splash woke me before the stinging cold—at least, I think it did. Gasping for air, I grabbed the sides of the tub and shot up, swearing. For the most part, I was still out of it, but that shock of frigid water somewhat snapped me back to lucidity.
“Stop trying to kill yourself, and we won’t have to throw you in an ice bath, dipshit.” Leo leaned against the tiled bathroom wall, cupping a hand to his face when he lit a cigarette.
“Idiot. That’s a myth.” Water trickled into my eyes, and I wiped it away. “If I’m really ODing and you throw me into a tub of ice, you’re gonna kill me. So next time you think I’m near death, either let me fucking die or give me some Narcan. Christ!”
“Told you.” Nash shoved Leo’s shoulder, knocking Leo’s back against the wall before his gaze met mine. “I told him it was BS, dude.”
I shoved up from the bath and grabbed a towel from the back of the toilet. “I’m drunk, not high.”
Leo took a drag and narrowed his gaze on me while the smoke crept through his nostrils. “There’s coke all over the coffee table.”
I hitched up a shoulder. “Fine. I did some blow and drank some Jack.”
“We’ve got to be at Madison Square in two hours.”Puff. Puff.
“Yeah. Fucking. Yeah.”
“I told you he was fine,” Nash said. “You’re such a puss, Leo.”
My vision blurred. I stumbled out of the bathroom and into the hotel suite, kicking empty bottles of liquor out of my way. Seeing as how divorce papers had been delivered to my hotel suite that morning, I thought I was doing exceptionally well to still be breathing.
I changed out of my soaked clothes, pulled on a pair of painted-on-tight black jeans that pinned my nuts to my taint, then I crossed the room to the glass door that led onto the balcony.
The lights from Times Square cast an electronic glow over the side of the building while the aroma of exhaust and fried food wafted in on the warm, night breeze channeling through the corridor of buildings.
“New York City,” I shouted, circling my sopping jeans over my head like helicopter blades. “I freeballed in these all day until my jackass friends threw me in a tub of water.” Some of the crowd below stopped to stare up at our balcony. Several girls screamed when I chucked the wet jeans over the railing. I didn’t wait to see if anyone threw punches over who got to keep them.
I made it two steps inside before I rolled my eyes. Leo, being the hypocritical bastard that he was, leaned over the coffee table, snorting a line.
“Nash, go get the tub ready. . .” I laughed and flopped onto the couch next to Leo. When I reached for the bag, he snatched it away.
“You want a nose bleed on stage again?” He flung the bag back to the table, then froze. He bent forward a little more and squinted. “Shit.” Leo tapped a finger over the divorce papers I’d been cutting lines on. “That’s messed up.”
“What’s messed up?” Nash bumbled over. A cloud of cocaine lifted into the air when he snatched the papers. His brows pinched together with a shake of his head. “No way. She’s not for real.” Then he looked at me like I was going to tell him something different.
I took the documents from Nash’s hands and grabbed a liquor bottle from the floor on my way to the bathroom. I downed what little bourbon remained before I tossed the papers into the toilet, whipped out my dick, and pissed on them.
Like hell I would sign those.
Five hours later,I stood backstage, my shirt soaked with sweat and my high almost gone. Thank God for the bottle of water—vodka—kept to the side of the stage for me. The liquor burned its way down my throat while the chants from the arena echoed through the backstage area. They wanted more show, but I personally didn’t see the point of encores. I guessed it was just something to stroke our egos. At every concert, the band tossed guitar picks and drum sticks to the crowd and strutted off stage, and then they just stood back there, guzzling booze and wiping off sweat while the fans outside begged for a little more. Everyone knew they’d get those last three songs from the album that hadn’t been performed.
I was desperate for this tour to be over. Performing, night after night, was nothing short of torture. Every track was written about her. “Dolled Up Princess,” brought the image of Georgia sprawled out naked on our bed to mind because that’s what it was about. “Van Nuys Clovers,” I wrote that the night I first saw her on her roof, staring at the stars, weeks before I ever spoke to her. “Velvet” was a full three minutes about her lips.
But the worst song was “Beauty in Ashes” because that song waseverythingI felt about her, and each drawn out note was a sharpened knife blade straight through my heart.
The stagehands counted down with silent fingers, and I guzzled the rest of the vodka.
Leo went first, wailing into a riff. Nash jogged out, the loud beat of his drum joining in with Leo’s rhythm. Then it was my turn to emerge from behind the curtain. The stadium screamed my name, the energy of it jolted through me like an 80-volt shock.
