Page 97 of Revelry

“I told you I would fix it.”

“How?” I shout. “How can you fix this? That shit is already out there. My face is splashed across every tabloid on the planet. People don’t think any less of you, of either of you,” I say, glancing behind him at Levi. “You’re rock stars—it’s all just part of the package for you guys, but this is going to follow me for the rest of my life.”

I let out a deep, shuddering breath, proud of myself for holding it together as much as I can. “This is not healthy for any of us. It’s not a normal relationship—”

“Fuck normal,” Levi says. “I don’t want normal. I want you and I’ll take whatever you give.”

“Levi,” I say, my voice breaking, and the tears finally spilling down my cheeks thick and fast. “We took it too far.”

“Fuck,” Cooper shouts. He takes a step back and rakes his long fingers through his hair. “Where are you going to go, Ali?”

“I’m going home.”

“And where is that exactly?” he asks, because he knows as well as I do that there is no home waiting for me. I don’t even have my bomb of a car anymore, because I sold it to the wreckers before we left. It wasn’t worth shit, and it certainly wasn’t worth the money I’d spend keeping it in storage for the three months I’d be on tour.

“Not here,” I whisper.

“Then I hope you find it.” He turns, walking back to the bus without a goodbye. I close my eyes tightly and bury my face in Levi’s chest as his arms engulf me. I sob until my voice is hoarse.

“Don’t leave, Red,” he whispers, his voice thick with emotion. “Please don’t leave.”

“I love you,” I whisper, and then I give him a sad little smile as I stare up into his beautiful hazel eyes.

“But you’re not in love with me.” Levi says.

I exhale a ragged breath and shake my head. “I wanted to. I think I did a pretty good job of convincing myself for a while there.”

“Fuck, Red,” he whispers, sniffing and wiping away his tears before they can fall. “I don’t care. Stay. Please, just stay.”

“I can’t.” I kiss his cheek, his lips, and finally I place a kiss in the centre of his chest, over his heart, and then I slide his hands from my body, hands that are clutching my hips so tightly I feel the imprint they leave behind. I open the car door, climb into the back seat, and tell the driver to go before I can change my mind.

Levi tries calling when I’m on the way to the airport. I don’t answer. I just stare at my screen and cry so hard that the driver pulls the car over to the shoulder of the road and asks me if I want him to take me back to the bus. I tell him to keep driving.

Coop had been paying my wage, and I’d spent very little of it. It was the last thing I’d ever take from him, that ticket home. I booked the next flight available, just four hours from now, and once I cleared customs I knew there was no going back. I knew I’d likely never see either of them again, and it hurt. God, it hurt so damn much. I sat in business class, and I drank whatever alcohol the flight attendant would bring me, and I didn’t stop crying the entire way home.

That was the longest nineteen-hour flight in history. I felt bad for the man in the seat next to me. He’d sat for the first three hours listening to me sniffle before handing me a monogrammed handkerchief that I proceeded to ruin, then he gave me his mini bottle of vodka and I cried some more. He was gorgeous, with blond hair and blue eyes and a dimple in his chin. His every movement was made with dignity and the proud air of money. He was so far removed from the rockers I’d just spent the last two months with. The rockers I’d given my heart to. And I had given my heart to them. All of them. Not just Coop and Levi, but Zed and Ash too. Hell, even Deb, James, and some of the other roadies held a place in my heart. It crushed me to leave any of them behind, but by the time my flight landed in Sydney, my eyes were dry, and my conscience was clear.

I book a cheap hotel at the airport, and I spend all of the next day lying in bed with the curtains open, watching the planes take off, and wondering where all those people were going. Tomorrow I’d walk into Harbour Records and quit my job. I didn’t want to work for a company that would exploit an employee to make a couple hundred more in album sales.

I knew the industry was just as corrupt as the movie business, or politics, but there were things you were willing to sacrifice, and there were things you weren’t. My morals weren’t one of them. I’d worked my entire life to get my foot in the door, and then when I had just the tip of my Cons in, when all my struggling had finally paid off, it wasn’t what I wanted anymore. Maybe it was never what I wanted, and I’d just needed the Taint tour to show me that. Maybe Cooper did me a favour by insisting that I go, because it helped me figure out that my dreams weren’t all they were cracked up to be. And maybe one day I’d forgive him for it.

“Chug, chug, chug,” my new work colleagues chant as I throw back the depth charge, shaking my head when the taste of bad beer and Bundy Rum rolls over my tongue. I’d managed to escape this torture for the last four weeks, but today when I’d tried to hightail it from the store, I’d been captured and corralled into the Irish pub down the street.

Apparently it’s tradition for them to drag new staff members out and get them so blind drunk they spill all their secrets. Then, said new employee spends the rest of their career at VinyLust getting a ribbing from every one of their co-workers. You can understand why I’d been avoiding it for weeks.

After I’d left Vanessa’s office, I’d found a backpackers in the city and had stayed there for the next two weeks until I’d found a job at the record store. I’d been there a week before I found a studio apartment in Surry Hills, a block and a half from work.

Working at VinyLust was a lot like being an actor in the film Empire Records. The store was located in an old warehouse on Devonshire Street, and it was surprisingly busy. Weird shit happened there every day, mostly because the staff consisted of a bunch of very eclectic people. From an ex-banker, to an oddly reliable middle-aged stoner, to a bookish freak, to a wannabe David Guetta, to a cute yet wildly tortured indie musician, to a fat French bulldog named Wax who slept wherever the hell he saw fit … and finally to me—loser, loner, and ex-rock-star-slut extraordinaire.

Tarsh, the owner, was cool, a thirty something single woman with shoulder-length brown hair and turquoise tips. She had a wicked sense of humour, and she didn’t take herself too seriously. She was good to work for—in fact, she’d been the only person so far that I’d interviewed for who hadn’t either flat out refused to hire me or wanted to exploit my connection to the band Taint.

So it shocked the hell out of me when Tarsh leaned across the table at our booth and asked, “So, Ali, I’m dying to know. What happened between you and the rock stars?”

“Was it real, what you had? Did you love them both?” Evie—the bookish freak—jumps in before I can even get my wits about me.

Max—DJ wannabe—says, “That dude doesn’t really have a twelve-inch cock, right? I mean, surely that’s bullshit. You’re so fucking tiny. How did it fit inside you?”

“Oh, wow, that’s a lot of really intrusive questions. Um … I don’t really know where to start,” I say, blowing my new fringe out of my eyes. I’d cut most of my hair off, wearing it in a shoulder-length bob with a heavy fringe to hide my face. I hadn’t bothered colouring it, because I couldn’t be arsed visiting a salon every six weeks for some arsehole hairdresser to pour chemicals over my head and charge me a small fortune for hours of torture. But the cut had been a good thing. Less and less people recognised me now.

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