Page 1 of Wild Obsession

Chapter One

Tim

I’M OFF.

I hear it. The rest of the band hears it. They generously say nothing as I stumble through the next measure attempting to catch up.

I wish I could say this is unusual, but I’ve always been off. Wrong, my parents might say. In my entire life, I’ve never quite managed to catch up.

I don’t manage it now either. I trip through the song, breathing a sigh of relief when we get to the end and the final notes fade into the padded walls of the studio space. My bandmates relax. Erin steps away from the mic. Cameron and Kelsey set down their guitars. I slouch behind my drum kit, sticks crossed in my lap.

“Let’s take ten,” Erin says.

We all obey without a word. Our flashy lead singer with the purple dreads has always served as our unofficial leader, long before The Ten Hours got our big break a few years back. We have a manager and a publicist and a booker and a whole team around us now, but at our core we’re still those four young, idealistic dreamers practicing in Erin’s basement and playing small-time shows in downtown Seattle. They can stick us in a fancy recording studio and trot us out on press tours, but the soul of The Ten Hours has never changed.

I’ve always been their weak link.

They’ve been kind enough to keep me around anyway. They could have replaced their crappy drummer with someone more skilled when the band blew up, yet they’ve allowed me to stay.

I slink away from my drum kit and snag the water bottle our guitarist, Cameron, holds out for me. We sink onto a beat up, smelly couch in the corner while Erin and Kelsey settle on stools.

“This album’s really coming along,” Erin says. “I’m feeling good about it.”

She should. She wrote nearly every song. That’s another thing all the big fancy music people could have changed about us, but Erin wouldn’t budge. She’s always been our song writer, with a little help from Cameron, and she’s still our song writer.

“Hell yeah,” Kelsey, the bassist, chimes in. “It’s so good. I really think it’s the best one yet.”

“You say that every time,” Cameron drawls.

“I do not.”

“You definitely do,” Erin says, “but I appreciate the sentiment regardless.”

We chuckle, and for a moment the warmth of the people around me patches over my shame at letting them down. All four of us really do treat this band like a family, even though the others have real families and I have … well, something a bit more complicated. It doesn’t matter as long as I’m with The Ten Hours, as long as they decide to keep me around. I try to be worthy of their friendship, even if I’m not a match for their musical skills.

We’re kicking back chatting when our manager Emmett pops in. It’s not unusual for him to show up when we’re recording, sometimes just to watch, sometimes simply to catch us all in the same spot at the same time. We’re not exactly the kind of people you invite to a meeting in a board room, though that doesn’t stop him from trying.

“How’s the practice going?” Emmett says.

“Great,” Erin says. “The album is really coming together. I think it might be better than our debut.”

“That’s great,” Emmett says, immediately disinterested.

He’s not really a music guy. He’s pure business, which is actually more helpful than it sounds. We’ve started to hit a point where we have actual fans — and need actual security as a result — and having someone around who is completely unimpressed by our rise is grounding.

“So, we might have to put the new record on hold,” Emmett says. “And by might, I mean definitely. You definitely have to put the new record on hold. For a tour.”

“What?” Erin says, jerking to her feet.

Kelsey scowls openly. Beside me, Cameron’s usual frown deepens. His dark eyes are piercing on his mildest days, but right now they could burn through Emmett.

I stay quiet. I’m just the drummer, the weak link. Erin is flashy with her purple dreads and huge voice. Kelsey is lively and animated. Cameron is broody and handsome. But me? I’m just a guy. Not tall, not short. Brown hair that’s neither black nor blond. A little stubble when I’m lazy, which is often, and eyes that are the sort of brown people forget about the moment they look away. So I leave it to my bandmates to object to this sudden shift in our schedule. We’re supposed to be getting our second album out there, not going on some big tour. Besides, we’ve already done one of those after the studio signed us for our first album. It was exhausting. We thought we’d get a break. What are they thinking pushing us out there again already?

Emmett puts up his hands in a placating gesture. “I know, I promised you you’d get a chance to work on the music. The thing is, you only have one album. People are going to forget about you if you don’t get back infront of them.”

“We’ll get back in front of them with the new album,” Erin says.

“You will, but first, you’ll go on this tour.”

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