Page 5 of Reverb

A guy waiting for me to finish my set was glaring at me from where he was doing biceps curls in front of a wall of mirrors. He was six five and absolutely jacked, but I glared at him until he looked away. I’d been contemplating the speck of glitter for too long, so I turned my attention back to what I was doing and channeled my rage into my workout.

When I finished with the weights, I did thirty minutes on the treadmill, then grabbed a mat and did pushups and situps. Sweat dripped onto the mat. I’d been doing monster workouts since the tour ended, pushing myself to my limits. Trying not to think.

Finally I stopped, sitting on the mat, breathing hard. I dropped my forehead to my knees and closed my eyes. I could feel my heart pounding and the pulse in my neck. The rhythm echoed the same words in my head, over and over: Do not think about her. Do not. Do not.

I had a lot of other shit to think about. With our reunion tour finished—ten weeks of sold-out shows—the Road Kings were more popular than we’d ever been. We were writing an album, and we were building a studio to record it in. Instead of selling ourselves to a record company, we were putting our own money in, along with funding from Will Hale, the millionaire who’d funded our tour. Apparently he liked our music, and he wanted to see more of it, so much so that he’d go into business with us. So we’d gone into business.

The deal was brokered by our new agent, Angie, who had come on board when our old agent—Angie’s father—died. The four of us Road Kings were now home in Portland, flush with cash, busy, writing and refining new songs. Things were looking really, really good.

Do not think about her. Do not.

She hates you, anyway. And who could blame her?

Still, as I stripped in the locker room, Sienna Maplethorpe crossed my mind, like she always did. Dark hair falling softly to her shoulders. Gray eyes fringed with dark lashes behind glasses. Lips of natural pale pink, whether she wore makeup or not. Wardrobe from the nineties, complete with Doc Martens and black skirts, even though she was a baby in the nineties. She was nearly ten years my junior.

So—no, I shouldn’t think about a woman younger than me, smarter than me, more educated than me, nicer than me, nerdier than me, and much, much more innocent than me. At all.

I stepped into the shower, blasting the water and remembering that every time Sienna looked at me, her pretty brows drew down in an expression that was part confusion, part disgust. The memory of that expression, of how repulsed she was at just the sight of me, made my pulse calm down.

When I got into my car in the parking lot, I finally looked at my phone, which I kept on Silent. I hated these fucking things, but there was nothing I could do about owning one. After five years of self-imposed isolation while we were disbanded, I had bandmates again. And business associates. And there was always Mom.

There were text and call notifications piled up, because apparently no one got the message that I wanted to be left alone.

From Denver, our lead singer, sent to our (just kill me now) Road Kings group text:

Denver

I came up with this a few hours ago. Is this anything?

He’d attached a voice memo.

I listened to it. It was Denver singing a few lines of a new song, a melody. It was good, because of course it was. It was Denver.

A reply from Neal, our bassist:

Neal

I like it. How about this?

He’d sent his own voice memo, which I played. Neal had taken Denver’s clip and added a bass line to it.

A reply from Axel, our drummer:

Axel

Sounds good, but we can’t nail down an entire album like this. We need to get into the studio.

There was more conversation about the studio we were creating, as well as the rehearsal space we were renting to work in while we were waiting. About schedules, timelines, plans. I scanned the thread, only half paying attention. I put the key in the ignition, powered down the window, and opened the glove compartment. I took out the pack of cigarettes that lived in there and put it on the passenger seat, but I didn’t take a cigarette out. I just stared at the pack for a second, then went back to my phone.

The band would start to rehearse in a few days. I’d show up when I was supposed to show up, play whatever I wanted to play. Planning too much wasn’t how I worked. When I got a guitar in my hands—that moment, right then, was the only time I knew what I was going to play. Whatever thoughts and feelings traveled up my spine and down into my hands. After so many years together, the guys knew how I got it done.

The cigarettes stared at me from the seat next to me. They’d lived for so long in my car that they were probably turning to dust and tasted like shit. I took them out nearly every time I drove, stared at them longingly, but I wasn’t going to smoke one. Just like I wasn’t going to think about Sienna Maplethorpe and the color of her lips.

The next set of notifications on my phone was from Mom, which had the effect of driving thoughts of sex from my brain while ramping up my desire for a smoke. She’d called me first, though she knew that I didn’t pick up the phone for anyone, ever. Then she’d switched to texting. Mom’s spelling and punctuation, as usual, were on point.

Diana

Stoney the electrick says I owe 200?? Is that right

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