Page 25 of Your Rhythm
7Bad Habit || The Kooks
KAY
“But I like,neversee you, Kay. You can’t come to Ottawa and then refuse to go out dancing with me, especially after I very generously gave you somewhere to stay.”
“Lily,” I groan, “don’t guilt me into this. You know I’m going to give in.”
“Exactly. That’s why I’m doing it.”
I’m sprawled on the bed in my friend Lily’s cramped studio apartment, recharging after the Sherbrooke Station show. Lily has lived here since we were in university together, and not much seems to have changed. The walls are covered in mandala tapestries, and the whole place reeks of weed.
My travel allowance fromLa Garewas so small I had to choose between getting a hotel room and being able to afford to eat. Since I knew Lily would probably be up for hosting, I chose the latter. Plus, she’s right: I like,neversee her.
“Oh my god, Kay, first you don’t take me to see Sherbrooke Station, and then you make me spend a perfectly good Friday night shut up in here watching you go over your journalism notes.”
“You can go out,” I tell her. “I don’t mind.”
She pounces on the bed, grabbing hold of my legs. Her long blonde and pink hair tickles the back of my thighs.
“But I want to go out withyouuuu.”
“Ugh, fine, but I’m not going to a shitty Ottawa club. We can have a beer at a bar and then I’m going to bed.”
She sits up and pouts at me. “Sigh.”
“Did you just say ‘sigh’ instead of actually sighing?”
“Shut up, Kay.”
I shift myself until I’m sitting up too. “Oh, and no bringing any girls home tonight. Unlike in college, I don’t have my own place to go back to when you bail on your offer to let me crash so you can hook up.”
To say that Lily likes girls is an understatement. The bed I’m currently sitting on has had more women cycle through it than the Playboy mansion. Normally I’d be high-fiving her for the accomplishment. Lily doesn’t take shit from anyone, and confidence surrounds her like some kind of mystical aura.
The only problem is that once said aura has helped her get a hold of a hot girl, she ends up retracting the offer to let me sleep here. During our nights out in university she was always telling me I could stay at her place instead of trying to make it back to my apartment across town. Things rarely worked out that way.
We’re out the door in twenty minutes and make it downtown just before midnight, when things are really starting to pick up. We head into a crowded pub, and it’s not long before Lily’s chatting someone up. I mostly keep to myself for the next hour, sipping on my beer and thinking over the Sherbrooke Station concert.
I could have watched from the press section right in front of the stage, but I asked for a seat near the back. I wanted to gauge the crowd’s reaction and get a chance to interview some audience members during the intermission. Most people there were the screaming fangirls I expected to see. When half the audience spent the opening act with their asses in their seats taking selfies, I settled in to spend the rest of the night as bored as all the boyfriends who got dragged along to the show.
Then nearly all the lights cut out and an eerie, pulsing synth beat started up. I caught myself squeezing the armrests of my chair, not even sure what I was bracing myself for as the whole room went silent and then got so loud with screaming that for a second, my brain was nothing but noise.
A ‘Sherbrooke Station’ sign made to look like a Montreal Metro stop flickered to life in the darkness, and that’s when everyone stood up and absolutely lost it. The entire audience rushed the stage the second the spotlights switched on, painting the band in blue and green lights as they launched right into ‘Split Knuckles.’
I stayed in my seat long after the second encore ended, watching the diehards beg roadies for set lists and guitar picks. I’ve been to enough shows in my life to recognize a rocky performance when I see one; I noticed the scowls the guys were all shooting each other for missing queues, and how JP and Cole kept ducking off stage between songs. For most of the show Sherbrooke Station sounded like four people all stuck inside their own heads, but when they did manage to get their act together, they were a tidal wave of sound. Their music was something unstoppable, a force of nature that leaves you standing there staring in terror and awe as you’re swept up into the current.
Ace worked the room like a hypnotist, drawing every eye and a sea of stretching hands whenever he got close to the crowd, but I couldn’t look away from Matt. He was wild on stage, sweat soaking his hair as he played with a fury I could feel all the way down to my bones.
“That’s her over there, being antisocial.”
I look over my shoulder to see Lily with her arm slung around the waist of a petite brunette girl who looks way too innocent to mess around with the constant disco rave hurricane that is Lily, but she always did go for the bashful type.
“Say hi, Kay!”
I give them a wave and pull out my phone to avoid getting called in to be Lily’s wing-woman. That’s when I notice I have a text from Matt:
You snuck away pretty fast. Didn’t feel like coming to our glamorous, star-studded after party?
I text back, asking if there’s seriously a star-studded after party inOttawa, one of the most boring capitals known to the world. He answers right away.
