Page 4 of Marley
He wafted the bag of cocaine in front of my nose as he spoke. I was eighteen and stupid, and I thought Rocco Taylor was a god.
“My ‘big bro’ could go fuck himself, and I had no idea where Maca was—probably loitering around the nearest payphone so he could ring George.”
He shook his head. “Dude, I know she’s your sister and all, but seriously, that shit could end your careers. You need to show him that single is the way to go. Just look at what Yoko did to the Beatles.”
I’d never thought of that before. Maca had not stopped complaining about how much he missed G. He even mentioned that he was gonna ask her to marry him as soon as she left school so that my mum and Dad would have no objection to her touring with us.
She was sixteen, for fuck’s sake. Who got married at sixteen? I loved my sister, and Maca was like a brother to me, but they were far too young to be thinking about all that shit.
“You wanna line? This is good shit. I’ve got an Algerian contact who gets me whatever I like at a moment’s notice.
He had one of those waterproof, plastic coin storage tubes hanging from a cord around his neck, containing the contents of a small chemist’s shop.
“Try one of these. When the girls get here, you will be able to fuck for hours.”
He handed me a small white pill and without even thinking, I swallowed it down with the last of my beer, then snorted a line of coke up each nostril from the bar.
I wanted to obliterate my thought process—I was sick of thinking and feeling. I just wanted to be numb. I’d just endured three days of watching my brother and my best friend behave like they were in fucking heaven, just because their birds had flown out to see them.
I wasn’t jealous as such ...fuck... yeah, actually I was. I was jealous because Maca always chose George over me and I was jealous because Jimmie had chosen Len over me. I didn’t even really fancy her that much, but I’d always assumed that one day, me and Jim would get it on. We’d always flirted around. Even as kids, there’d been a little something between us, and I think I just felt like I was entitled to claim Jimmie as mine. I never for a minute considered that she would be interested in someone else. Then when she was just fourteen, it all came out that she was seeing my eighteen-year-old brother. Everyone but me, seemed to know about it and ithurt. It hurt a fucking lot. I felt stupid, like Jimmie had led me on, just to get to my brother, but of course she hadn’t. We’d been mates, Jimmie and I, and nothing more. What I saw as flirting, she saw as teasing. It was no different to what Maca did with her, but back then, my head needed a bit of a wobble, so instead, I sulked like a little kid and allowed Rocco and his poison to get under my skin.
“He’s talking about proposing to her,” I stated after a few minutes of silence.
“Maca ... to your sister? How fucking old is she?”
“Sixteen. She’s still at school,” I told him.
“Seriously? Why the fuck would he wanna do that?”
“Because it’s the only way my mum and Dad will let her come on tour with us.”
“What about her education? College? Do your parents not want all of that for her? I mean no disrespect, dude, but they’re both so young. What if in a few years from now they split up? What’s your sister gonna be left with then?” he asks with a serious, concerned tone to his voice. And me being the idiot that I was, I took it at face value. He was, after all, my friend, and was just showing concern for my sister.
Yeah, right.
“Relationships are hard to hold down in this industry. You guys are just on the verge of making it big. There’s gonna be tours, worldwide TV appearances, long hours in the studio, and women. Fuck, there’s gonna be women throwing themselves at you every which way you turn. How long till he can’t resist? After a month, or even a few weeks away from home, he’ll start feeling lonely, and there will be warm, wet pussy available everywhere he goes, willing to keep him company. How many times will he be able to say no, especially once the babies come along and your sister can’t travel with him all the time? I’m telling ya, man, he’ll either cave, cheating on your sister, or he’ll wanna quit the band and stay home with her and the kids. Either way, it will bad news for you—bad, bad news.”
I hung on his every word, absorbing them all like a sponge. I let them soak into my bloodstream like the coke he fed me for the rest of the afternoon. They settled like poison in my chest, my belly, and my brain.
A few hours later, I was a mess. High as a kite from the coke, horny as fuck, and loving anything and everything, all from the little white pill that Rocco had given me. I’d never experienced anything like it. I felt euphoric, like I could take on the world. I wanted everyone to try one of those little white pills so that they could feel as amazing as I did.
I looked up as a crowd of girls started to make their way towards us. Haley White was at the front of a group I recognised to be band slags that had been following us around from gig to gig.
I had to hand it to Haley, she was a resourceful little thing. From following us around the pubs and venues of Essex and East London, she was always there, sucking and fucking her way through the members of each band we played with, just so they’d keep her around.
At the time, she was Rocco’s favourite plaything, but I’d watched her and I knew she had her sights set on Maca, who she’d always been obsessed with. It was something we joked about and took the piss out of him for. However, none of us had any idea of the lengths she would go through to split him and Georgia apart.
I watched as the group of about twelve girls threw down their towels and bags on the sun loungers. Some of them started to remove their tops before jumping into the pool to join myself, Rocco, Wayne Allen, Kombat Rock’s drummer, and Riff Reynolds, their guitarist. I slid off my stool at the swim-up bar and dipped farther down into the water to hide my hard on. I was eighteen, snorting cocaine, popping what I later found out was ecstasy, and drinking beer with three members of one of the biggest bands of the time. In addition to that, I was in a pool with a swim-up bar, surrounded by a dozen women wearing little more than a smile and a ‘come fuck me’ look. Of course I had a fucking hard on.
Things slowly began to spiral out of control from there. A few minutes later, I watched all heads turn as Maca walked out to the pool area, looking thoroughly pissed off. He pulled his T-shirt over his head, threw it on a chair and dived in. He swam almost the length of the pool, underwater, surfacing in front of me a few moments later. The water was just below his hips as he stood up and you could almost hear the collective sighs of every woman, and some of the blokes, as he pushed his hair back off his face.
Even I had to admit he was a good-looking fucker, almost verging on the side of too beautiful for a bloke. He was always a bit skinnier than me, but we had both been hitting the hotel gyms hard while on tour and even had a set of weights we used regularly on the bus, so we were both looking pretty ripped for a couple of eighteen-year-old kids.
I don’t know exactly what happened in those few moments I spent watching him wade through the water towards me—the drugs and alcohol I’m pretty sure played a big part—but I’d readily admit there was something else. I don’t know if it was his presence, or the effect he had on everyone around him, but something made my dick stir as I watched him.
I’m not gay. I’ve never fancied blokes or had any desire to fuck or be fucked by another man, but for the first time ever, as I watched Sean McCarthy walk through water towards me, I got hard for a man. It fucked with my head big time, making me feel angry and that, combined with Rocco’s words from earlier about Sean splitting up the band to be with Georgia, made me resentful. He was my bandmate, best mate, and like a brother to me, but at that moment, I was confused about exactly what it was I was feeling for him.
“Maca, glad you escaped the chains that being in love have wrapped around you and decided to break free to come and join us.” Rocco called out from the bar stool he was sitting on, Haley straddling his lap with her bare tits pressed against his chest. Despite being in that position, I’d noticed she hadn’t taken her eyes off Maca since he’d walked out to the pool.
