Page 27 of Got to be You

Oh, yeah, like doing drugs together would be a much better solution. Do these guys hear themselves? I kinda want to intervene, but I would only be pulled into an argument that isn’t mine and that I really don’t have the emotional energy to get myself involved with. I should just leave them to it.

“The screwing around is wrecking this band,” Harry continues, yelling like a madman. He’s so unbearably different from the person I first met. It’s awful. I liked him then. I thought he was an amazing person, but the man he has become is someone else. “There won’t be another album at this rate. And the drug use… the drinking as well… the partying is going to fuck everything up.”

This little comment is probably directed at me as well, but I don’t give a shit. He can moan and bitch all he wants, but my bottle and I are quietly enjoying ourselves over here, thank you very much. We aren’t kicking up a stink and irritating the tour bus driver who is only trying to do his job.

“No, it’s you who will ruin this band.” If only Spike could be quiet as well. “You should just fucking leave. Then we could get a bass guitarist who actually knows how to play. That would be better for all of us. We could probably get a fucking child to do it since it’s so easy. I don’t know how you’re so shit.”

“Oh, and I suppose hitting a few drums is so goddamn hard,” he spits back. “It can’t be since you manage to do it while being a goddamn junkie at the same time. When are you ever not off your face?”

I can sleep through the noise of parties, but this is quite hard. Despite everything that has gone on between us, I still do care about these guys and I hate listening to them tear one another down. It doesn’t feel right. Once upon a time, maybe for only a short period of time, we really did care about one another.

We were friends, family almost, and now because our dream has become something of a nightmare, we seem utterly determined to take each other down. We’re destroying ourselves from the inside out because we don’t have any control over what goes onaround us.Theyown everything else. It sucks, though. I would love to find a way to stop it, and not just because I want to get some shut eye, but I don’t know how.

Drinking… that’s how. At least, that’s how I’ll end up asleep. The rest of it… I have no idea.

I press the vodka bottle to my lips and drink. I don’t stop the liquid from flowing down my throat until I start to get woozy and a little sickly feeling. The motion of the bus doesn’t help that. But the guys’ shouting has become blurrier now, not so painful to listen to. Thank God. I wasn’t sure how much of that I could take. Now I can shut my eyes and see what happens. Hopefully, I’ll wake up with a way to escape everything.

“We’re here?” I slur as I finally just about manage to let some light into my eyes. My head pounds, but I’m used to that now. The pounding is a side effect of a good drinking session. “Urgh, already?”

Harry and Spike don’t answer me because they’re exiting the bus with their faces like thunder. I guess they haven’t managed to make up while I’ve been sleeping. Brilliant, that means we have another night of me trying to rile up the crowd while in a bad atmosphere. Faking it always makes it that much harder.

“Fine, whatever.” I push myself up into a sitting position and rub my eyes. The smell of alcohol is almost overwhelming, but when I see the vodka trickling out of the bottle beside me and I realize that I’ve slept in it again, it makes total sense. I need a shower before we get back out there later on. “Fuck this.”

I’m not going to let their argument keep me away, so I rise to my wobbly feet and follow them outside. Sucking in gulps of fresh air is my first priority, so I don’t notice anything including my surroundings for an embarrassingly long time. But as things start to come back to me, I see that it’s familiar to me. Very familiar, not just somewhere that I’ve been once but somewhere that I know well. If I wasn’t so shattered and hung over, then I’m sure it would have come to me right away, but as it is, I need a moment.

“College,” I whisper to myself, a little shell-shocked, to be honest. “How did I not know?”

Admittedly, I’ve pointedly not been paying much attention to what’s going on around me recently, but I should know what’s happening when we’re doing our first date in a place where I lived for a long time. I would have thought that Will would have been especially excited for us. Unless he has been and I haven’t noticed, I suppose. I’ve been pointedly ignoring a lot of things going on around me.

It’s like my eyes have been shut, but now they’re wide open. Really wide, and I can see everything with a clarity that I’m definitely not ready for. Including myself. I’ve been focused a lot on Harry and Spike becoming different people since we were last here, but what about me? I’ve changed a lot too, and not for the best. I was an upbeat, ambitious person who wanted to have it all. Now, I feel like a nobody.

Everything that made me the person I was always meant to be has been stripped away by how soulless all of this is. I wanted this life because I didn’t know how it was going to be, but now I can’t help wondering what direction my life would have taken if I had just seen college through to the end.

I wouldn’t be a part ofLionHeartand maybe I wouldn’t be anywhere near as famous, but I would probably be a whole lot happier. I wouldn’t feel like everything was out of my control.

“Weird being here, isn’t it?” Spike says quietly, almost as if he can hear my thoughts. “This is the city where it all began. We might even have people that we know here, coming to see us tonight.”

Whoa, I never even thought of that. I stare at him with wide, shocked eyes as a bolt of panic races through me. “Oh, God, that’s insane. What if they are? What are we going to do?”

We both glance to Harry, who shrugs stubbornly. “I guess we do what we can to put all of our shit to the side for one night and give it our best shot. It might help that I’m staying at my mom’s afterward.”

“We’re here for the night?” Wow, I really haven’t listened to enough of what’s going on around me.

“Yeah, we sure are. But I’m sure that the tour bus will still be available to sleep in if you have nothing else. I don’t know if we have a hotel arranged since we’re all assumed to have people here. This is basically our family visitation for the year.” Harry laughs mirthlessly. “What a treat, huh?”

This is officially the most connected that I’ve felt to the guys in months, years maybe, but I know it won’t last. We aren’t going to remain in this comfortable place. But maybe for tonight, we can put everything aside and just remember who we are and how good we can be if we try.

“Since this is basically ground zero, we should give tonight our best shot,” I offer kindly, really hoping that these words aren’t going to spiral into yet another argument. “Don’t you think?”

The guys nod, we come to an agreement, and I try to focus on that rather than who might, or more likely might not, be coming to see me play tonight since I severed all ties with everyone. It would be nice to have a familiar face out there in the audience, but I suppose that might make me a little too nervous as well. It’s probably for the best that I don’t have anyone here to see me. Anyone in my life, they wouldn’t like who I am, anyway. But I’ll have it in my mind, I’m sure. I’ll be thinking about everyone and looking. Just in case.

She won’t be there, I have to remind myself.You don’t even think about her anymore. Certainly not right now.I’ve spent so long trying to get over her that I can’t undo all of my hard work now, even if I’m in the place where I first met Lilly Jenkins. It’s also the place where I lost her forever. This changes nothing.

20

LILLY

What am I doing here?I wonder as I look around at all the concertgoers who are absolutely loving their lives right now.Why did I think this was a good idea? What a drunken fool I am.

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