Page 9 of Rock Star

I’d grown up in the UK watching imported American TV programs. The States had felt amazingly familiar to me, yet totally surreal… like I’d stepped out of a dream and onto a movie set. We’d gotten off the plane and immediately started a rollercoaster make-or-break tour across the continent. I remember us vowing that ChiMera wouldn’t piss the Yanks off by behaving like some Brits who’d tried to make it over here and had failed. Talent aside, we knew we needed to work fucking hard, charm the pants off everyone and show what we were made of.

Initially, audiences were ambivalent toward a bunch of unknown limeys. Our number one UK hit ‘London Lovers’ had barely charted this side of the Atlantic. Determinedly, we kept it all together step-by-step, mile-by-mile, state-by-state. Clubs, then theatres, then national TV. Over fifteen months, ChiMera crisscrossed America six times, performing over 150 gigs and glad-handing endlessly with people in the business. Basically, we ‘whored ourselves around’, but it paid off. By the time we were playing sold-out shows at the Hollywood Bowl and Madison Square Garden, we’d become huge.

Huge, but floundering under the pressure…

The sudden ringing of my cellphone interrupted my thoughts. I pulled it from my pocket and checked the caller ID.

Noah, my half-brother.

I clenched my jaw.

We hadn’t spoken for a while…

I pressed answer. “Hey.”

“Our parents have heard the news and they aren’t happy the band has seen fit to replace Ella,” he came straight out with it.

I tensed. “We’re not ‘replacing’ her,” I said through gritted teeth. “She’s irreplaceable. We’ve simply found a sub and are dedicating the rest of the tour to Ella’s memory. She’d have wanted us to carry on.”

“She’d have wanted to live a long and happy life,” he muttered.

“I know. And believe me I feel terrible about what happened, but we can’t change the past.” I blew out a long, slow breath.

“Mum wants you to move back to England.” Noah’s tone had turned conciliatory.

“I can’t do that. My life is here now,” I groaned. “This is where me and the guys set up our record label. People depend on us…”

“I know,” he said, “but you should at least try and mend the breach between you and Dad.”

“I’ll be back in the UK in June. If Dad will agree, I want to see him… and the rest of you of course.”

“I trust you are clean of drugs now?”

I assured Noah that I was, and promised I’d give Mum a call before we left on tour. She, at least, wasn’t as unforgiving as my father. Mum and I had spoken a couple of times since Ella had died, but our conversations had always ended with Mum sobbing down the line.

Noah and I said goodbye with assurances we’d speak again soon. My half-brother and I got on well enough; but having two different dads made us noticeably unalike. Went without saying that Noah was far more conventional than me. He’d taken over as CEO at Lombardi & Wainwright last year, after his dad had decided to retire from property development and focus on philanthropy. Noah had married the daughter of Mum’s best friend. He and Gwyneth had produced three kids, a girl and two boys, in the space of four years… and he was only two years older than me. I missed him, like I missed all my family. Even more now that Ella was no longer…

I closed my eyes, remembering the sound of the ambulance sirens, then running footsteps as the EMTs burst into Ella’s dressing room. I’d found her minutes earlier, a livid bruise around her ankle where she’d tied it off to get at the veins on the top of her foot. She’d been unresponsive and had died in my arms.

Anguish clogged my throat; the memory was fucking killing me.

I picked up my cell and placed a quick call to Mike. Tonight, me and the guys were going to a wild party at one of our favourite clubs and would be surrounded by shameless displays of excess. Champagne spraying over tables. Beautiful women doing things they wouldn’t do within 200 miles of their mothers. It would distract me from my sadness, I hoped.

Tomorrow, I would see Phoenix. There was something I needed from her. Something I hadn’t shared with another soul. Everyone thought I’d been coming up with songs for our next album while in rehab and since. But I hadn’t. It wasn’t that I was suffering from writers’ block. Far from it. My well of creativity hadn’t run dry, but it was running fucking dark and depressing.

I pulled my eyebrows together in a frown. ChiMera were known for songs that spoke to our fans’ hearts. Songs that reflected most people’s happy and loving life experiences. Songs they could relate to. We were due to start putting down tracks when we returned from the tour and I had nothing to show the guys. Nothing that I wanted to show them, that is.

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