On the Road: (Vagabonds Book 2) (New Adult Rock Star Romance) (5 page)

Chapter Seven

IT WASN’T LONG before we’d all adjusted to life on the road.  We learned a lot of truths.  The first was that a hotel bed, no matter how comfortable, didn’t offer real rest.  I could hardly wait to sleep in my own bed.

I don’t know what I would have done without my smart phone.  It was my lifeline to everything—my parents, the world, the guy I was lusting after.  Even pictures.  It was chronicling my life on the road, and when my phone got too full, I’d post a few on Instagram, but most of them I’d save on Facebook or just send to myself in email.

Oh, and speaking of social media, all our accounts began to explode.  It was outrageous how many likes and follows and friend requests we were getting on a daily basis now that our song was on the radio and we were on the road.  Dared we say we were becoming famous?

Another truth—doing laundry sucked as much on the road as it did at home, only we had to be bored at the fucking laundromat.  And they were all the same.  Dingy walls in a semi-humid room that smelled like whatever scent the fabric softener sheets had been infused with that day.  I was glad I didn’t own anything that had to be ironed because, if I had brought something like that on the road with me, I would have tossed it by now.  I had no patience for stupid shit like that.

Oh, yeah.  Yet another truth—McDonald’s was a great way to stretch our money.  We girls ate there at least once a day if not more often.  It was like a teenager’s dream.  All of us (except for Vicki) had parents who didn’t let us eat there very often as kids but now we could eat there all we wanted—and so we did.

We were already learning that fame wasn’t all it was cracked up to be.  People thought that, just because they’d seen you on stage or listened to your album, you were like one of their friends.  Because they felt like they knew you, you belonged to them.  But those people didn’t give one shit about us.  Nobody did.  I was beginning to hate that part.  The worst were all the creepy old men in the audience treating us like sex objects—calling us
baby
and
doll
and more lascivious things.  There was no mistaking their intent and it got really old really fast.

Yet another truth—some people seem to be born addicts.  Take Vicki, for example.  She was only eating two meals a day now and why?  Because she was buying cigarettes on a regular basis.  She was an addict, plain and simple, and she had a pack-and-a-half to two-pack a day habit.  She offered them to me on occasion and I always took her up on the offer, but I was not as yet hooked.  Vicki, though?  She was already a slave.

What worried me more, though, was her growing fascination with drugs.  Andrew provided pot whenever any of us asked.  I wasn’t too worried about weed.  Nope.  I was more worried about the harder stuff I was afraid Vicki would try when she no longer got the jolt she was looking for from whatever her high-du-jour was.

And she was seeking it out.  Man, was she seeking it out.  Sometime near the end of September, we were in Houston, enjoying an after-party, and she was asking the fans and other bands what shit they had to share.  Ecstasy and mushrooms weren’t enough, so she kept looking.  I wasn’t sure what she’d scored by the end of the night, but she was completely blitzed.  She looked happy but she could barely move on her own.  I finally asked Andrew for help to get her up to our room once he’d parked the van that night.

I wish I could have taught her all the rules I was learning on the road, things like
Don’t take candy (drugs) from strangers
and
What goes up must come down
(if you’re high, you gotta come down, and gravity doesn’t always feel as good)…except I knew another one that already applied to Vicki: 
You can’t begin to heal until you admit you have a problem.

But the one I was learning the fastest was that not everyone had my best interests at heart.  In fact, I think I was the only one…which meant I had to keep an eye out for myself.

* * *

I wasn’t sure how or when it happened, but my first clue was when Barbie and Liz asked to room together night after night.  My second clue was noticing that Andrew and Barbie
weren’t
together.  That was strange, because she’d taken to him like flies to shit.

My third clue was when Barbie kept slapping Liz on the ass one night at a show in Virginia.  I thought it was weird and a little rude until I saw Liz grin at her and then, during my solo, Barbie blew her a kiss.  The next night, Barbie made the
V
with her fingers, sticking her tongue between them, indicating that she wanted to lick Liz’s pussy…and Liz didn’t cringe or blush or look away.

What.  The.  Hell.

How had I missed that one?

Peter didn’t say a word.  I at first expected him to come down on them hard, because they’d be frightening away all the old pervs who came to our show to fill their spank banks with fantasies of nubile rock stars, but then I realized it was going to do the exact opposite.  All those pervs who had a lesbian fantasy could fulfill it by watching Liz and Barbie, and those who didn’t still had the rest of us.

I couldn’t understand that overblown fantasy anyway.  For some reason, guys thought that two women who loved women would all of a sudden decide they wanted a big, juicy cock in the mix.  Uh,
no
.  That wasn’t the way it worked.  Unless, of course, they were bi.  I now knew Barbie was, but I had no real handle on Liz, although thinking of her as a lesbian actually explained some things about her.  It felt genuine.  Barbie, though—it just felt like a phase.

And that was Barbie in a nutshell.  The girl was like a butterfly, flitting from interest to interest, boyfriend to boyfriend (or girlfriend, in this case).  She couldn’t settle down long enough to really focus on any one thing.  That stressed someone like me out and made it hard for me to tolerate her.

About a week later, Barbie pissed Peter off and he punished her.  He didn’t tell her that, but he was.  He put all five of us in a room together and said the reservations were fucked up.  The motel was full.  If any of us wanted, he said, we were welcome to share a room with him and Andrew.

Uh…the man was out of his fucking mind.  No, that wasn’t it.  He was instead trying to seem like he was doing everything in his power to make things right, but I knew better and, I suspect, my bandmates did as well.  Still…I was positive it was bullshit, that he wanted the presence of three other girls to ruin Barbie’s good time.

And he was right.  Not because of Barbie.  She would have been perfectly happy fucking Liz right there in front of us all—maybe even asking us to join her—or even kicking us out for a while or excusing herself to the bathroom and dragging Liz along.  But Liz wasn’t having any of it.  She was uncomfortable enough with Barbie’s PDAs but no way was she going to have sex with Barbie for the whole world to see.  Liz was too reserved, too private, and Barbie pushed her boundaries as it was.

Since we had two double beds, I offered to sleep on the couch in the room.  Housekeeping brought me a sheet and blanket.  Barbie asked why I didn’t want to share a bed with her and Liz.  I tried to smile but found it difficult.  “Right, Barbie.  You have
never
had the hots for me, so don’t even pretend.”

She shrugged and grinned.  “Okay…got me there.”

Yeah, that was what I thought.  She was hoping to make me feel as squirmy as she’d made Liz, but that wasn’t going to happen.

Since it was more a girls’ night type of thing, we wound up watching two movies on HBO.  Vicki had suggested renting different movies through the hotel channel but we all yelled
no
, perhaps a little too quickly.  We knew Peter would take it out of our earnings—and, knowing that bastard, he’d probably charge interest.

Vicki, though—anymore, she seemed half out of it most days.  I knew she’d moved up to harder drugs but I was afraid to ask what…and I wondered if I should lecture her.  Should I talk to her?  Talk to her mom?  Tell her she was walking down a dangerous path?

I considered it but continued to stand back in the meantime because I didn’t know that I was the right person to lecture.  After all, I was still feeling my way around my tentative step into adulthood too, and I was experimenting just like she was.  Sure, I was dealing with milder forms of mind-altering substances, but I was using them nonetheless.  I had no issues with cigarettes, pot, alcohol, and other drugs that I considered “mild.”  I wasn’t so concerned with them being habit forming, because I figured that could be dealt with in time.  No, I was far more worried about the danger.  After all, how many of my favorite rock stars had died of drug overdoses?  Hmm…let’s see.  We had Jimi Hendrix.  He was a confirmed OD.  Same with Robbin Crosby.  Or maybe they were complications with drugs.  And then there was Kurt Cobain.  He didn’t die of a drug overdose, but it was no secret that he’d struggled with addiction—and maybe that had driven him to take his own life.  The only person not on my drug problem list of heroes was Randy Rhoads—he’d died in a plane crash.  But, aside from the guitarists I worshipped, there were plenty of other rock stars who’d died of drugs.  That was why that old saying—sex, drugs, and rock and roll—was always thrown about.  It was a saying for a reason.  The music and drugs went together so well, and I wasn’t sure if it was because drugs seemed to fuel the creative spirit or if, being musicians, there was plenty of time and less responsibility that allowed those people to do more drugs than other folks.  The sex…well, that just followed easily, because if you’re rocking out and feeling high, sex seems like a natural.

Besides, there’s nothing sexier than a fucking rock star doing his thing onstage.

So my only bandmate who seemed to keep to herself and try not to stir up trouble was Kelly.  In fact, what I loved about the girl was that she always had a smile on her face.  Nothing ever seemed to get her down.  When I was feeling bad about something, Kelly was the go-to person, because she could always cheer me up.

She always had a kind word to say too.  So after we shut off the lights that night and I started dozing off, I heard Barbie and Liz getting hot and heavy.  Vicki snarled, “God, you guys.  Give it a rest, would ya?”

“Fuck you, you jealous bitch.”  I doubted Barbie had even taken her lips off Liz before muttering it.

Less than a minute later, Kelly said, “Gosh, guys, I still have to pinch myself sometimes.  I can hardly believe this is happening.”

I smiled—thanks to Kelly—but I kept my mouth shut.  I could believe it.  I’d earned it, and there would be no stopping me now.

Chapter Eight

WELL,
THAT
HAD been short lived.  By the time we were in New England, Barbie and Liz were through.  But I got the feeling that Barbie was going to consider trying to sleep her way through the rest of us.  Kelly, for example?  I knew the two of them had gotten a little hot and heavy on occasion, especially when Kelly had been drinking…but I got the feeling Kelly wasn’t too happy about it.

It was no secret that Barbie hated my guts.  Well, maybe
hated
is too strong a word.  She was no Kyle fan, and she began to dislike me more and more the longer we were on tour.  The main reason, I think, is because I got tired of her fucking around all the time.  I had nothing against playing but when it interfered with work, I took issue with it.  Work first and work hard—then fuck around if you must.  Maybe I was a little vocal about it and she didn’t care for that.  Well, too damn bad.  So, if she’d tried to get cozy with me, she would have stopped herself.  The only kind of fucking she’d want to do with me would be angry fucking—and how, exactly, would a lesbian do that?

Ah—my naïveté was showing.

Vicki, though—that girl got herself into more and more sticky situations.  We’d been playing around and calling her “Sticks Vicks” for a while because of her drumming but then, just one time, I called her “Sticky Vicki,” telling her I was amazed at how she got herself in and out of trouble so quickly.  Barbie then said, “Oh, no.  She’s ‘Sticky Vicki’ for other reasons.”  She started laughing and then, after looking at Barbie wide-eyed for several seconds, Vicki began laughing too.

Oh, a private joke.  And that told me all I needed to know.  Barbie had struck again.  I guess that meant I was the only one who hadn’t gotten intimate with her.  And I wouldn’t.  I couldn’t stand her, and I found it hard to get horny over someone who pissed me off on a regular basis.  She was a girl too, and while I didn’t dislike females, they did nothing for me in the sex department.  Men revved my engine.

The only reason why I didn’t hate Barbie completely was that she was really good at her job.  The singing part?  Eh, anyone could do it.  She wasn’t an opera singer or anything unique in the voice department, but she had a magnetic charisma onstage.  And she knew how to strut her stuff.  She had the men (and some of the girls even) eating out of the palm of her hands.  The second she walked on stage, all eyes were on her.  She was a natural when it came to drawing people to her.  In that regard, I had to once more give Peter credit.  Liz, although she had a decent voice, was like a block of lead in front of the mike.  She got down to business, sure, but she couldn’t charm her way out of a paper bag.  I think that was because she was nervous and also because she also had the job of playing guitar.  Barbie, though?  She had enough charisma and appeal for the five of us, and it seemed to come naturally to her.

So I respected her…but that didn’t mean I had to like her.  Nope.  She’d probably have had to completely change her personality to do that.

* * *

I think it was in Boston, although it might have been somewhere in Connecticut or New York (I get it all mixed up nowadays)—the weather was getting cooler now that it was mid-October, and I discovered that a few beers or something a little heavier kept me warm onstage.  We wore such skimpy tops that the extra warmth was welcome.  I usually wore cut up jeans or leather pants with boots, so my bottom half could withstand cool weather, but my arms, even though in motion most of the time we were up there, would get chilly, even in some of the indoor venues.

This place happened to be an indoor arena, but it didn’t stop me from warming up with alcohol.  If I didn’t overindulge, my playing didn’t suffer.  The crowd there, wherever it was, was extra rowdy.  I heard at least one heckler that I was tempted to flip off, but I suspected that would only encourage his behavior.  I ignored him instead.  The entire audience was more vocal than usual and out of control.  In addition to the heckler (who I think was there for Fluidity and just biding his time with us), we had more than our usual number of horny men yelling suggestive things at us between songs, wolf whistling and probably even drooling.  It was the first show I played where I wasn’t happy and feeling like I’d really entertained people.  Instead, I felt almost abused, degraded…dirty.  I could tell by the look on Liz’s face when we left the stage that she too wasn’t happy.  Barbie, though—she was in her glory.  She loved being worshipped, whether it was as the singer of a rock band or the subject of celebrity gossip due to “leaked” nudie photos that “accidentally” got into the wrong hands.

This venue had one of the coolest backstage areas of any we’d ever played, but that was all I could say for it.  They had showers and I decided to take advantage, because I wanted to wash it all off.  I hated the way I felt after what had seemed almost like sexual abuse.  Barbie wanted to party and so they were going to do just that in one of the bigger rooms.  A lot of times we’d just head back to our hotel, but tonight we were hanging around—why, I didn’t know, because I hated this show more than any other we’d performed thus far.

So I took a quick shower and then headed over to Barbie’s party.  Maybe if I had enough to drink, I could drown out the bad vibes of this place.

But there was lecherous Andrew and he was hovering a little too close to me in that small room.  We had the roadies, some extra guys from the other bands who didn’t have anything to do for the time being, a few people with the venue, and some other people I didn’t know about.  For some reason, I remembered Peter telling my parents about having a bodyguard with us at all times.  What a load of horseshit.  Maybe I should have told my parents what a liar he was.  But I knew exactly what would happen.  He would hire one and take it out of our future promised pay.  Or maybe he’d withhold the money now, making our daily “stipends” next to nothing.

Besides, would a bodyguard protect me from my fucking employers?

I somehow doubted it.

But Andrew kept coming up behind me and whispering shit in my ear—I couldn’t even hear what he was saying—and instead of having the desired effect I was sure he was aiming for, it was just creeping me out.

Liz and I were chatting with someone I thought was a fan—a twenty-something guy who said he played in a local band—and she and I were talking about how we’d grown together musically since hitting the road.  We were able to sense what the other was doing, so even if we changed something on the fly slightly, we were okay.  Kelly seemed to be able to read us too, but she didn’t guide where we were going.  And something that people didn’t seem to understand when the Vagabonds split was that Liz’s guitar was just as important as mine.  Giving us labels—lead guitarist and rhythm guitarist—seemed to diminish what Liz did in everyone’s eyes, but it wasn’t like that at all.  Our sound was both of us—
together
.  If one of us had been missing from the equation, the band would have sounded quite different…even though Liz did a lot of the writing.  She wrote the lyrics and she wrote the music, but once I got my fingers on the tune, I often changed it.  I almost always changed the tempo, something that pissed Liz off in the beginning but she grew to accept it over time.  Usually, I’d make it faster or feel heavier, but once in a while, I’d even slow it down.  Sometimes, I’d change a note or a chord too.  Like the song “Dirge of the Scourge”—if you’d heard it before I touched it, you probably wouldn’t recognize it.  I did an almost entire rewrite of the melody, because I thought the lyrics would be better served with minor chords.  Liz hated it at first and refused to play it, but when I played it one more time at Peter’s request, she saw how the music moved and haunted our bandmates, and she changed her mind.  But that was for our second album, of course, one we hadn’t written as yet while on the road.

Well, that’s not entirely true.  Liz was always writing, always creating, and she had several notebooks in her luggage that kept all her notes and ideas.

What I’m trying to impress upon you is that the Vagabonds were held together by Liz.  She was that band.  The sound, though?  That was both of us.  If I hadn’t been around, the band would have sounded a lot different.  I suspect it would have had more of a pop sound or even soft rock.  Actually, no.  Peter knew what he was looking for, what he wanted, and that was probably
why
he’d recruited me.  He knew Liz needed someone else for balance, to push us into the rock echelon, somewhere we might not have been if not for my urge to headbang.

Anyway, this guy with us was asking questions about our songwriting technique, and I admitted that Liz wrote everything.  I came along behind her and modified what she had, but it was all her.  Liz never blushed but she had a hard time accepting direct praise.  She smiled and said, “Yeah, but look what Kyle does with it.  Oh, and then there’s CJ too.”

I frowned.  I’d tried not to think about him.  I’d been actively pushing him out of my head.  I didn’t want to focus on him, didn’t want to give him any more space or time in my mind.  It was sheer agony being so far apart and knowing that, even if we were closer, he’d still push me away and for what?  A stupid goddamn number.  So I mumbled something like, “Oh, yeah,” not wanting to say anything negative because, truly, I was hurt by him.  It wouldn’t have hurt if I hadn’t wanted him so badly.

But the guy with us didn’t know any of that.  Hell, I didn’t know how much Liz even knew about the weird thing (if I could even call it that) between me and CJ.  I was working hard at keeping my face neutral when I felt a tap on my shoulder.  I was pretty sure it was Andrew being creepy again, and I ignored him the first time.  When he did it again, though, I knew I was going to have to let him have it.  So I turned around, a grouchy look on my face, and blinked in confusion when I saw it was TT, one of our roadies.

I was so shocked that I didn’t even say anything.  Instead, TT said, “Hey, Kyle, there’s some dude who wants in, says he wants to meet you.”

“So…why don’t you let him in?  There are all these other people.”

“Yeah, who were vetted by Peter.”  I couldn’t help myself.  I almost snorted at TT using a word like
vetted
.  It was almost comical, because the guy seemed to have a vocabulary of five-hundred words.

“Anybody know this guy?”

He shrugged.  “I think so.  I’m pretty sure he’s connected with the venue somehow…like the manager or something.”

“Jesus, TT.  Then let him in.  We need to make friends with these people—so we can come back in the future.”  Evidence that my roadie friend smoked too much weed—he couldn’t make these connections on his own.

But he could use the word
vetted
.  How I managed not to roll my eyes is beyond me.

Only I would find out later that maybe I should have listened to him.  After all, unlike Peter, he had my best interests at heart.