Page 98 of All In
“Yeah,” I said, a smile finding its way to my lips. “It sounds pretty fucking good to me too.”
CHAPTER
THIRTY-SEVEN
The rain came down hard, pattering on my roof. I sat curled up on the chair in my living room listening to raindrops hit the gutters with a metallic clang and break open. An addendum to the Sony contract I’d signed sat in my lap, Grant’s plain-English translation of the legalese scribbled along the margins. A tour addendum. They wanted me to go on a two-month, fourteen-city tour.
It didn’t look so bad on paper, especially with Grant highlighting all the perks and riders in bright yellow. Three different kinds of sparkling water in every dressing room? It sounded like waste, not a perk. Touring meant I’d be cut loose like an astronaut, floating far away from home base. All the fancy bottled water in the world wouldn’t keep me from missing my house. And Yvonne.
And Teddy.
I already missed him. We’d both been so busy. His client roster had become a mile long since theInkedfeature. Soon, the market would turn, and he’d buy a place in Vegas, just as I embarked on my career. A tour would only pull us farther apart, and we were already stretched to the breaking point.
I missed him. My chest was hollow with it.
My phone rang, showing the Olsens’ number. “Hey,” Grant said. “So. Any closer to putting your pen to the dotted line?”
“Sony Records tour,” Phoebe drawled in the background. “No dinky little side shows. It’s the big time, girlfriend. Big,bigtime. Like Peter Gabriel ‘Big Time.’”
“Okay, okay, she gets it,” Grant said, and cleared his throat. “So, Kace? What do you think?”
“I don’t do well on tours.”
“So, you keep saying. Is it nerves?” Grant asked.
“Booze,” I said. “I’m just starting to have a sense of settling down. I don’t want to be uprooted already.”
Phoebe snorted. “It’s only a two-month tour. Hardly the stuff of uprootage.”
“That’s not a word,” Grant said.
“Yes, it is,” Phoebe said. “I just used it.”
“Well, shit, can’t argue with that logic.”
“Guys,” I cut in. “I just…give me some more time.”
“We can try,” Grant said. “But with no new album on the horizon, a tour forShattered Glassis the next big thing. We don’t have the clout of a high-end lawyer to negotiate.”
“Don’t say that,” Phoebe hissed at her brother. “She’ll replace us with some high-end lawyer.”
“Guys, I’m not replacing anyone. Give me a week, okay? I know it’s a big deal to you two, I haven’t forgotten.”
“Sure, sure,” Grant said. “One week. No problem. Take your time and think it over.”
“Don’t think too hard,” Phoebe said. “Mardi Gras is in two days. Jump on that tour, and we can pretend the whole city is throwing us a party.”
I hung up, feeling shitty for making them wait. As my de facto agents, they stood to make a hefty percentage of a tour’s ticket sales. The Olsens had never tasted success like this before. I had. Like any sugary treat, it tasted heavenly at first, but if you gorged on it, you’d be sick. And I was a recovering glutton.
Yvonne was working a graveyard shift that night, and I didn’t feel like going out. I put on sweatpants, a T-shirt, ordered a pizza and vegged out on the couch. A cable channel was playing a marathon of theVacationmovies.
It was after one a.m. and I was onChristmas Vacation,chuckling as Randy Quaid emptied his RV’s septic tank into Chevy Chase’s sewer, when my phone rang.
Teddy…
“Hey,” I said. “It’s late.”
“Did I wake you?” he said.
