Page 9 of Wild Obsession

Undeterred, Jacob hurries to keep pace with me. “Because you seem upset.”

“I’m always like this.”

“True, but even for you, this is a bad day. Nervous? Is it because of that drummer? I didn’t know you guys had met before.”

I’m pretty open with my bandmates. They’ve certainly seen me shamelessly slink off for a quickie in the bathroom with a fan before. But I haven’t told them the truth about Tim for some reason.

“It doesn’t matter,” I say. “He’s a guy I knew a longtime ago.”

“Seemed like it mattered during rehearsal.”

I stop abruptly, turning on Jacob so sharply that he flinches back. “I said it doesn’t matter.”

He puts up his hands. “Whoa, fine, okay. Forget I asked. Jeez.”

I stomp away, snatching my duffel bag off the sidewalk and climbing into the bus. It’s huge, with couches and tables and several coffin-like bunk beds in the back. I choose a top bunk and throw my bag up there, then close the privacy curtain. Soon, the rest of my bandmates are boarding the bus. I choose a chair beside a window and settle in with my phone, ignoring the others as they chatter excitedly.

Thankfully, they leave me alone, and soon the bus is rumbling out of Seattle and onto the highway. Our first stop is Portland, which is only a few hours away depending on traffic. From there, we’ll continue south and then east, hitting a lot of the major cities as we make a loop around the country before heading home. It’s going to be an exhausting and relentless six weeks, with only short breaks in between the stops, but I’ll endure it all if it means snatching this dream away from Tim. He thinks he’s hot shit because he made it and I’m still the fucked up kid smoking under the bleachers, but he’s wrong. I’ve grown a lot since he disappeared on me, and I’m ready to steal this throne from him.

The road to Portland is dull, so I curl up in my chair and nap, or pretend to nap. It keeps the others from botheringme, though Jacob’s excited voice floats outside my awareness throughout the entire drive. Levi is, as usual, happy to go with the flow. Even Dan, our second guitarist, joins in with Jacob’s excitement. At least our lead guitarist, Shawn, knows how to shut up and brood like a normal rockstar.

We make good time to Portland, which means we’ve got hours to check into our hotel and set up for the show. We’re used to hauling our stuff around ourselves, but The Ten Hours aren’t, apparently. Roadies appear to help with the equipment the moment the tour buses reach the venue. It seems we’ve hired some roadies of our own, or, rather, the management company hired them on our behalf and are counting on us to be worth the investment, but I don’t enjoy handing over pieces of my drum kit to some random guy I’ve never met.

“You better not drop that,” I say as he leaves with my snare drum.

“Relax, Keannen,” Jacob says. “They’re professionals. They’re not going to drop anything. Let’s go check out the venue.”

Reluctantly, I follow Jacob and the rest of my band into the venue. It isn’t a stadium or anything quite so grand, but it’s still a far cry from the bars we’re used to playing. Our lives have gotten a massive professional upgrade in the blink of an eye, all because the management company thinks they can play us off The Ten Hours and double down on their investment in both bands in the process.

We enter a back door and wind through hallways clearly reserved as greenrooms and staging areas. Then we turn, and suddenly we’re standing on a stage.

A concert hall spreads before us, three tiers of seating rising within the venue. Those seats look down on the stage like a cresting wave, leaving me impossibly small. Fancy lights hang overhead. The walls bear decorative arches like something out of an opera house. Deep, rich red carpets the floor and drapes down the walls.

It’s the biggest stage I’ve ever stood on, so big I forget for a breathless moment that I have to share it with Tim Thatcher of all people.

Even though we have several hours to kill, stage and tour managers start ushering us around after that. We have to eat. We have to change. Someone fixes the eyeliner I did myself this morning, like every morning, and puts powder on my face. Someone else does my hair so the dyed black strands fall more neatly around my face. They like my tattoos, they say, and I should show them off. Good for my image. Good for the band. So they put me in a shirt with cut off sleeves and jeans with tears in them so the ink can peek through.

The only saving grace is that they have my four bandmates and all of The Ten Hours to do this to as well. When they’re done with me, they shoo me away and sink their claws into someone else. I slip away from the hair and makeup and wardrobe people as fast as I can, heading for the stage instead.

Someone has set up our instruments. Mine and the rest of Baptism Emperor’s, I mean. We’re on first, after all. We’re the opener, an appetizer before the big shots perform.

My drum kit offers familiar comfort amid a day of strangeness. I settle on my stool and twirl my sticks between my fingers, miming the first beats of the first song without actually playing any notes. I don’t want to summon one of these manager-demons, who might come to me with some new torment if they hear me playing.

I get so lost in even pretending to drum that I don’t notice Tim joining me on the stage. One moment I’m drumming, lost in my own world; the next I look up and there he is, standing shyly at the edge of the stage. They’ve dressed him up too, mussing his plain brown hair so it’s artfully messy and sticking him in a graphic T-shirt and some tight jeans. I try to tell myself he doesn’t look that good like this, but the way the sight of him interrupts my drumming makes the lie too obvious to swallow. So fine, my ex looks good when they’ve spent an hour playing dress up with him. So what? Lots of people look good.

I leave my drum kit and stride over to him. Tim flinches as I approach, but admirably holds his ground. He looks even better up close. They gave him a little eyeliner, and those pants — they really shouldn’t hug his body like that.It makes me think about how tightly they’re gripping his ass.

Seeing him standing there looking that good and wearing that innocently flummoxed expression, a sneer twists my mouth.

“Trying to steal my secrets?” I say. “I get that you could learn a thing or two about drumming from me, but you could be a little less pathetic about it.”

“Keannen, I’m not here to fight with you,” he says, voice soft, like this is a secret he’s whispering to me. I suppose it is. Can’t let your big important band know about your biggest regret in life, right?

That only makes my tongue sharper when I reply.

“Maybe I’m here to fight withyouthen.”

I poke him in the shoulder, but he unfortunately doesn’t take the bait, just keeps peering up at me with those innocent damn eyes that haven’t changed at all since high school. They put some powder and shit on his face, but thankfully (or unfortunately, perhaps) it isn’t enough to cover those freckles of his.

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