Page 76 of Revelry

“I don’t have a fucking problem,” I say, and I push the button for the divider. It’s cruel, because Ali is completely naked and mad as all fucking hell, but I don’t give a shit. “Take us to the venue,” I command the driver.

“We’re already here, sir.”

“Shit,” I say.

“I’m sorry, sir, I didn’t want to disturb.”

I start sliding the divider up but he says, “Shall I come open the door for you?”

“No,” Ali screeches. Levi mutters a string of obscenities under his breath. I slam my hand down on the button and toss back the rest of my drink, and then with one last glance at the two of them, I open the door and step out into the balmy evening.

Sound check sucked. I couldn’t remember any of my fucking lyrics. I couldn’t take my eyes off Ali. She sat in the audience with her arms folded, beside my sister. Oddly, they both had the same pissed off look on their faces—lips pursed, brows furrowed, and hard eyes. Christ, alone they were both a forced to be reckoned with, but together? They were fucking scary, and I’m sure that every single one of us felt it.

Levi hit a flat, Zed, who ordinarily is never ruffled by someone else’s fuck up, tripped all over the beat, and because those two jackarses had thrown my concentration my throat croaked out a raspy whine instead of a roar—okay, so maybe it wasn’t just Levi and Zed screwing with my concentration.

“Fuck.” I drop the damn microphone and stalk from the stage, snatching up a bottle of room temperature water and dousing my raspy throat.

Deb stands up in her seat and shouts at all of us, “Jesus, what the hell is wrong with you idiots?”

I have the strongest urge to tell my sister to shut the fuck up, but in a way I’m glad to have someone call us all on our shit. “You two are too fucking distracted by this sweet little piece of pussy here”—she points to Ali—“to see how badly you’re fucking everything up. Zed, I know you’re trying to cut back on the drugs, honey, but maybe for now we should try getting through the rest of this tour without all losing our shit, and Ash, I don’t know what the hell is going on with you, but this half-arsed band member shit has got to go. Either you’re in or you’re out, sweet cheeks. You can’t play like fucking Jesus and then take away all the fishes when the crowd is gone.”

“Deb—” I warn, but she holds up a hand as if to say I’ll deal with you in a minute and I promptly shut up

“So what the hell is going on with you, Cohen?”

“Nothing is going on with me,” Ash responds, running a hand over the back of his neck.

Levi studies him and then says, “Dude, were you banging some bitch you left back in Sydney?”

“What? No.”

“Are you gay?” Zed says, spinning his drumstick over his knuckles. He doesn’t seem fazed by the question, or the answer he might receive, but instead throws it out there as if he’s just tossing out ideas into the wind.

“No. I’m not fucking gay just because I’m not sticking it to everything that moves like all of you are.”

“Dude, what the fuck?” Levi says. “Why the hell aren’t you sticking it to anything that moves?”

“Because I don’t want to lose focus here. All of you can fuck up regularly, and you’d never be replaced, but bassists aren’t really that hard to come by.”

We all turn and look at him.

“Are you fucking serious?” Levi demands.

Zed gives him a goofy smile. “You’re not replaceable, man.”

“None of us are replaceable,” I say, swallowing hard. “We don’t just switch out band members. If one of us doesn’t do this, then all of us don’t do this. Where is this even coming from, Ash?”

“Forget it. Never mind.” He swallows hard, and wipes a thick sheen of sweat from his brow. He looks sallow and his eyes dilate to a point where all I can see from where I’m standing is huge black pupils.

“Are you high?”

“No. I’m just not feeling well.”

“You wanna take a break?” I ask.

“No. Let’s just get through this. If we suck this much during practice, surely we can’t be that bad tonight, right?”

“Right. Let’s do this, motherfuckers,” Zed agrees with a triumphant crash on the cymbals that has my ears ringing. He holds it steady to mute the noise, but my head still feels as if it’s going to explode.

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