Page 12 of Give Me What I Want

She had been wrong so far though. We had stuffed ourselves with waffles at breakfast, then had a failed bike ride where Cole had almost ended up ploughing down a group of old ladies and Bea had fallen off of her bike from laughing so hard. She had grazed her knees and broken the bike, cutting the entire activity short. Now, she was bounding ahead of us—having let go of my hand for a minute—with bright blue plasters decorating her knees while her black, pleated skirt swished around her thighs, almost exposing her underwear. And Mav hadn’t cracked a single smile.

“Hurry up, boys,” she called, spinning to face us, her signature red lips lifting into a grin. Her black hair with its blonde streaks had been pulled up into a messy bun, something her stylist would go mental about later on. Isla—Bea’s personal stylist slash hair and makeup girl—had styled Bea’s hair this morning and had given her strict instructions to leave it loose all day for some reason, I hadn’t really been paying much attention, but the moment she had stepped foot off of the bus Bea had scooped her hair back and shoved a pair of cat-eyed sunglasses into the mess. I had lost count of how many times she had let her sunglasses get tangled in her hair today and one of us had had to untangle them. I was quite excited to get back later though and witness my ‘girlfriend’ get torn a new one by the prickly little blonde whom she had disobeyed.

“Where is she dragging us now?” Jord asked as he stifled a yawn.

“Where do you think?” Cole said with a wiggle of his brows. “She’s been going on about it all morning. Bea wants to hit up the dick place.”

“The what?” I asked.

“Sex museum,” Mav mumbled just loud enough for me to hear as he barged past me, thick, muscular arm knocking into my own.

Oh, brilliant. When she had said she wanted a picture with a giant dick I had actually presumed that she had meant me… Apparently, I was wrong. And apparently, we were off to browse a museum about sex. “Are we all going?”

“Of course we are. Come on, dickwad, let’s go.” Cole said, leading the way to catch up with our bandmate.

She was still bouncing around ahead of us, drawing so much attention her way it was a wonder no one had stopped us all for photos. There was no hiding who we were on a hot-as-fuck day like today. Bea’s distinctive tattoos were proudly on show, as were a lot of the rest of ours. That was the thing about the art we put on our bodies, it was harder to go unnoticed. We were easily identified. Not that we minded too much a lot of the time, our fans—even the new ones—were usually pretty respectful, at least, they were when they’d see us in the streets. Catching a glimpse of us after a show though, where the atmosphere and alcohol—and sometimes other substances—amped up the excitement, was a whole other story. Luckily for me, I was the least approachable. I may have been putting on a show with Bea, but I never pretended that I was a nice guy or a cheery little ray of sunshine. I was a sarcastic, slightly over-confident, prick, with a really fucking good complexion and insane cooking skills, who could sing better than any of the other guys and could hold my own on any instrument. I simply chose to play bass over anything else because of how the instrument made me feel. And it made me feel like a fucking god.

Reluctantly, I kept pace with the rest of the guys and eventually we caught up with Bea.

“You’ve gotta stay close,” Mav scolded her.

Bea rolled her eyes at him. “Nothing bad is going to happen here, plus we have security following us…” She raised her voice. “…Not so subtly.”

I turned to see two guys behind us looking uncomfortable as they had been called out by our bandmate. It was her one condition to having a security team—she still didn’t think we needed one, but we did—they had to be inconspicuous, blend in, act like they weren’t there to keep us protected. Bea liked to feel free, and I guessed I could relate to that. I hated feeling suffocated, something I had felt my entire life up until moving away from my family to attend college. Although now I wished I could feel that discomfort just one more time from my dad. I wished I could hear his overbearing comments on my life, followed by him looking at me with all of that love in his eyes as he told me he only wanted the best for me.

Well look at me now, A-Pah, I have the best.

I might have dropped his last name when we rose to fame, taking my mother’s maiden name instead, liking how it flowed so much nicer, but I still cared what he thought. I was still his son. And now I had a life he’d be proud of; I was sure of it.

“Sorry, Miss Bolton,” one of the guys mumbled and I shook my head at him. What a sap. He noticed and straightened his spine, flattening out his expression into one that hid the little bitch look he had just been wearing. I didn’t understand how she managed to do that to anyone, but he wasn’t the first guy to look at her that way.

“You’re forgiven,” she said cheerily, then approached me, took my hand, and dragged me to the entrance of the museum we had stopped outside. The one where she’d find the biggest dick she could, and pretend to lick it while one of us took a picture.

It was stupid, but by the time we were leaving all of us had smiles on our faces. Even Mav. We had laughed away all of our built-up stress and tension, and I hated to admit it, but our Queenie had been onto something dragging us into that place. We were relaxed—some of us a little more than others thanks to a trip to a little café on our way back to the bus—and we were ready to put on one hell of a show.

I sat beside Mav as he fiddled with his guitar, waiting for the band who were hyping up our crowd to finish their set. Usually, he’d leave all of his instruments with Kelly—my favourite roadie—to tune, but tonight he had taken his all-black Gibson out of her hands and was humming as he plucked the strings. Surprisingly, I didn’t find it irritating. It was just nice to see him so calm. To not see his face etched with lines of worry. He looked more like his old self tonight. Not that I’d tell him that.

The band came off of the stage, excitedly chatting between themselves as they rounded the corner towards us and took over the remaining sofas.

“You’re on in fifteen,” Mark—our tour manager, a man I liked a hell of a lot better than Garth—said as he followed behind them. “Where are the rest of you?”

“No idea.” I shrugged, but Mav piped up too.

“Bea’s on the bus making a call to her sister, and Jord and Cole are outside.”

I hated it when he did that. When he showed off just how stupidly observant he could be. It rubbed me up the wrong way, but I wouldn’t let it affect me right now. I wanted to cling to the pre-show excitement instead.

Drawing my attention away from him, I joined in the other band’s conversation. Our opening act had been a local band, something we were doing for each leg of the tour. Then we’d had Beauty Within play next. They had joined us for the first half of the tour and would be heading back to the UK in a couple of weeks, then we’d hopefully be joined by Fall From Grace, although that was looking less likely by the day. I was trying not to let it stress me out though, if they couldn’t make it, we’d find a replacement.

But could we find a replacement that were worthy of us? That was the big question. Fall From Grace, though pretty unknown thanks to the drama with their frontman, were worthy. They were incredible, the type of musicians I wanted at our side. So were the guys from Beauty Within, and in the following few minutes they had me hyped as fuck to get up on the stage and show the people of Amsterdam just how amazing we were live.

Mark had gone off to round up the rest of my band, and when the one-minute call was made we were all exactly where we needed to be. There was something special about this venue, an old church that had been transformed into a music venue, it had character. But it wasn’t exactly the ideal place for certain parts of our usual show, so there wouldn’t be as many theatrics tonight, but we’d put on the best damn show, just like we always did, and it would begin with fire.

The entire venue turned black, and the crowd silenced for just a minute. A minute was all we needed to run through the darkness to our places before four blasts of orange and red shot up behind us.

We had practised getting around in the dark over and over during soundcheck, and for the first time, Cole had managed to make it to the drumkit without knocking anything over. He rolled his sticks over the kit and Bea let out an excited yelp, one that was echoed by the crowd.

“Good evening, Amsterdam,” she called out, her voice filled with excited energy and a seductive purr.

---