A Rocker's Melody (Dust and Bones) (9 page)

Her hair sported a purple haze streak in Jimi’s honor, and she’d busted out the guitar she’d nicknamed ‘The Professor,’ thanks to its plum hue. Her power panties and matching bra were color coordinated, completing her pre-concert ritual. She was ready to rock. What she was
not
ready to do was pour her heart out to Seattle’s version of Katie Couric.

Melody hated reporters. It sort of ran in the family; her father had once punched a reporter who had asked an invasive question about one of the singers he had been managing at the time. Melody didn’t think she’d get violent, but she had to think soothing thoughts to avoid pre-interview jitters. Having to speak about herself in coherent sentences in front of someone who was hanging on her every word was a nightmare, as far as Melody was concerned. Performing on stage was a breeze compared to this.

The bus door opened, and Big Mike escorted a woman inside. She was short, with a dark pixie haircut and pink cat-eye glasses that looked more decorative than practical. Melody wondered if she even needed them.

“Chelsea Smith,” Big Mike announced.

Jesper moved forward to shake her hand, and welcomed her aboard. The rest of the guys did the same. Melody nervously glanced over her shoulder; Dylan had been MIA since the previous morning, when he’d cocooned himself into his bunk. They had all assumed he was sleeping off his hangover or possibly working on acquiring another. Jesper had reminded him about the interview a few hours ago, and he’d snapped back that he remembered and to leave him the hell alone until then.

Melody had a bad feeling about this.

“Nice digs,” Chelsea complimented. “Melody, how are they treating you?”

Melody feared she resembled a deer in headlights . “Great. Good. I mean, we’re still feeling each other out.” Jesper was pinning her with that intense look of his. “I’m happy to be on the road,” she stammered.

“We’re feeling more creative than ever,” Rip added.

“How about that hazing?” Tank laughed.

Melody got the feeling they were making fun of her but she was too nervous to care. Chelsea was tapping notes into her tablet computer. She opened her mouth to ask another question, when a loud thump drew everyone’s attention to the bunk area. Melody suppressed a groan; she knew what they would see.

Indeed, when she turned, she was rewarded with the sight of Dylan sprawled in a heap on the ground, staring straight up at them. He laughed. “So that’s where the ceiling went.”

“Shit,” Jesper muttered.

“Can I get you something to drink?” Rip asked quickly, leaning into Chelsea’s personal space.

“Yeah, I’ll have whatever he’s been having,” Chelsea said, jerking her head toward Dylan. “Dylan, are you planning on joining Snake in rehab?”

“Fuck rehab,” Dylan declared. “Life’s one hit after another until you crawl into the grave. If you’re lucky, you get to have a little fun along the way. Hey, that’s not bad, is it? Maybe that can be the lyrics to our big hit song. Just need the melody to go along with it, Melody. Can’t write worth a shit, man, and I got her to annoy the shit out of me every day.” He rolled onto his side.

“Help me get him back in bed,” Jesper hissed at Tank, hurrying over to Dylan and struggling to lift his dead weight off the ground.

“No way, I’m not leaving ,” Dylan argued. “I gotta give an interview to a lady.”

“I’m ready when you are,” Chelsea said, with a bit too much enthusiasm.

“Maybe you should go back to bed,” Melody suggested gently, worried by the reporter’s eagerness to speak with the drunken Dylan.

“No,” Dylan snapped, with more venom than she would have expected from a jolly, giggling drunk. He grabbed onto the side of the bunk and hefted himself up. “I’m not going back to my goddamn bed.” He swayed a little on his feet, then began tugging at his shirt.

“Dylan—” Jesper started, but he cut himself off and groaned as Dylan whipped off his T-shirt.

“Oh, so much better,” Dylan moaned. “Why do we wear clothes, anyway? They’re just in the way.”

His pants came off next. Melody didn’t bother to conceal her admiration; she was all too happy to ogle his fine form when there was no chance he’d catch her in the act. Dylan Bennett might be a womanizing asshole, but his body belonged in a museum where it could be appreciated by drooling women for generations to come.

“This isn’t really naked time,” Rip said, casting a nervous glance in Chelsea’s direction.

Melody didn’t even try to avert her eyes. She would never be able to look at him again without picturing his perfect ass and that—
wasn’t alcohol supposed to diminish what was going on down there?

“You need to have clothes on right now, dude,” Tank said, grabbing a robe from the bathroom. He tried to drape it around Dylan’s shoulders, but their lead singer suddenly morphed into a toddler before their very eyes.

“Don’t want it,” he whined. “I’m HOT. It’s hot in here.”

He stumbled over to the window above the kitchenette, fumbling with the lock; all thumbs. Melody marveled that the man who couldn’t open a window could play guitar and piano like it was second nature.

“Hot,” he muttered, and before anyone could stop him, he slammed his elbow through the window, shattering the glass. Blood dripped down his arm. He didn’t seem to notice, sighing happily as the cold Seattle air hit him in the face.

“I’ll get the first aid kit,” Jesper said, sounding resigned and annoyed.

Melody rushed over to Dylan, grabbing his wrist and forcing him to hold it up. “Keep it there,” she ordered, grabbing his discarded T-shirt from the floor. She tied it around the cut to stop the bleeding.

“I’m tired,” he said, looking into her eyes. His were cloudy and unfocused, but there was deep pain swimming in their blue depths, the kind of agony that swallowed you whole. Or maybe that was just the bourbon.

Before she could decide which it was, Melody was distracted by Chelsea, who was closing in on Dylan’s injured right side, snapping pictures.

“This isn’t a good time,” Melody said pointedly, planting herself between Dylan and Chelsea.

“This is the perfect time,” Chelsea said.

“The interview hadn’t started yet,” Rip said. “This is all off the record.”

Chelsea laughed. “That’s a good one. Off the record. There’s no such thing in celebrity journalism.”

“Maybe not at the rag blog you work for,” Rip muttered.

“Be careful who you insult,” Chelsea said.

“Look, no one means to insult you,” Melody said, trying for a soothing tone, even though all she really wanted to do was snatch Chelsea’s phone and smash it into her stupid cat glasses. “We’re just under a lot of stress right now. Live tours are a lot of work, and all the time spent on the road makes you a little stir-crazy. The new album is coming along, but as I’m sure you know, a lot of pressure exists when…” She trailed off, searching for the right words.

“When your lead singer starts a small kitchen fire,” Chelsea supplied calmly, raising her phone to snap another picture.

“Yes,” Melody agreed, before she fully processed the words. “When your…” Her eyes widened and she spun around. She saw Dylan standing over the sink in the kitchenette. A bottle of lighter fluid sat to his right, and a small flame flickered atop a guitar on his left.

“I think this is going to work,” Dylan muttered, swaying on the spot.

Melody didn’t stop to think about her actions—all she knew was that the instrument was beautiful, and the fire was still small, and therefore containable. Acting on instinct, she grabbed an old blanket from the back of one of the dining chairs, and immediately started smothering the fire, hissing as she felt a flame sear the skin of her palm. The fire went out as quickly as Dylan had apparently set it.

“Mel, stop, you’re burning yourself,” Jesper said, trying to pull her away.

“That’s his favorite guitar,” she said. She had seen the band perform on a thousand YouTube clips, and whenever Dylan played one of their older songs, he had that guitar. In fact, he’d had it the night she had met him. She could only imagine what kind of dark place he must be in now to have set it on fire. Drunk logic only excused so much; Dylan was clearly drowning, and Melody wasn’t sure how long he’d been under.

“No matter what I do,” Dylan said. “Can’t write worth a shit. And it’s all your fault. I could use a
Purple Haze
right about now. Or, at the very least, a
Little Wing.
”

Melody saw red. Had he really set his guitar on fire because he wanted to write a song like Hendrix had? She recalled the video she’d seen ages ago of Hendrix on stage at some festival, setting his guitar on fire just because he could, because little boys liked nothing more than finding new ways to burn down their lives...although usually, it wasn’t quite so literal. Her palm was still throbbing, but the pain almost felt good. It focused her. This was the breaking point. The hazing and the arguments she had taken in stride, but this, this utter
waste
of his talent and his life, finally pushed her over the edge.

“What the hell is wrong with you?” she yelled, stalking up to Dylan and slapping him across the face. It was the second time she’d hit him, and the first time she’d wanted to do it again immediately. “You don’t
light objects on fire inside a bus.
”

He looked stunned for a moment. It seemed as if all the bourbon he’d consumed was preventing him from processing what had just happened. Then his eyes narrowed, darkening into that stormy blue he used to hypnotize women from the stage. This time it wasn’t calculated. He was angry, too.

“
Everything
is what’s wrong with me,” Dylan yelled. “I’ve got all your worried little looks coming at me all the time—yeah, Jesper, I see those. You think you’re being so fucking subtle, but I know what you’re thinking. I’ve got fucking Hop—
Hop
, who’s never written anything more complex than an email—telling me to get over it and put something down on paper, like it’s that fucking easy. Like I don’t already know the future of the band is on my shoulders. And you.” He laughed, letting loose the harsh, lost sound all drunks seemed to locate. “I’ve got you, the girl with the bright green eyes, everywhere, in my face, on my stage, messing up my goddamn thoughts.”

“Oh, you’re so put-upon,” Melody seethed. “It’s so terrible to be surrounded by people who care about you, and to find a last-minute bass player who miraculously knows all your songs and bails your ass out of tour hell.”

“I wish we had canceled the tour,” Dylan muttered. “At least then I wouldn’t have to put up with all this bullshit.”

“You’re done,” Jesper said, shoving Dylan’s chest hard enough to force him back a few feet. “Go sleep it off.”

Dylan opened his mouth, clearly ready to argue and bluster with every drunken bone in his body, but something in Jesper’s expression stopped him.

“Fine,” he muttered, refusing to look directly at anyone. He turned on his heel and stumbled back to his bunk, climbing inside and pulling the curtains closed behind him.

“Hey. You need ointment on that,” Tank said, holding out a tube to Melody. She thanked him and slathered some on, all the while watching Chelsea out of the corner of her eye. As soon as the first aid needs were attended to, the reporter spoke.

“Would anyone like to give me quotes?” she wondered, breaking the silence.

“Please don’t print this,” Melody begged.

“This is the kind of copy that writes itself,” Chelsea insisted.

“Come on,” Rip said. “I know this was nuts, but…he can’t be that big of a story.”

“Anyone that drunk is that big of a story,” Chelsea argued. “Add nudity, destruction of property, and arson into the picture, and boom—slam dunk.”

“He’s been this drunk half a dozen times before,” Tank pointed out. “Hell, he and Snake crashed a Vespa into a carnival booth at that Make a Wish event last month.
That
was a story. This is just a guy who fell out of bed, opened a window the wrong way, lit up a Hendrix homage—in his home city, I might add, so points for that—and did a very tame, very unsexy strip show.”

“Yeah, I’m not going to write it that way,” Chelsea said. “I’m thinking,
Rock Star Pyromaniac Tries to Kill Band in Bus Fire
.”

“I’ll give you an exclusive about Serena,” Melody said, the words escaping her mouth before she’d consciously decided to utter them. “I’ll tell you why I really left.”

Chelsea finally snickered. “Your old band is old news. A story about Serena being a controlling, lying bitch is hardly groundbreaking. Pass.”

“It was about Ian,” Melody said in desperation. The bus went silent. None of the guys knew her backstory yet. She’d wanted to keep it that way, to put all the drama behind her and never look back—but this was an emergency. She could see the gears turning inside Chelsea’s head, and though the reporter did her best to hide it, Melody caught a glint of excitement in her beady little eyes.

“I don’t know,” she said slowly. “Ian’s not really getting the hits he once had—”

“He’s been quiet because he’s been screwing around with a supermodel,” Melody interrupted. “You can break this story—and what I have to give you is much juicier than another tired piece about Dylan Bennett being drunk.”

Chelsea pursed her lips, considering. “It’s big?”

Melody let out the breath she’d been holding. “Chelsea, it’s fucking huge.”

A drum-playing gnome had taken up residence inside Dylan’s head, and he was about to projectile vomit all over the little bastard. He opened one eye, squinting at the sliver of light that had managed to sneak through the curtains around his bed; he may as well have been staring directly into the sun. The world was spinning around him. He wished he could just lie there until it stopped.

“Rise and shine.” Tank’s voice boomed from the hallway, and he flung the curtain open wide. His cheerful face stared down at Dylan.

“Go away,” Dylan moaned.

“No can do,” Tank said. “It’s my job to get you up and at ’em.”

“And I’m supposed to help,” Rip added, his face joining Tank’s.

“Make it stop,” Dylan moaned.

“We’ve all been there,” Rip said. “Drink this.”

“Who made it?” Dylan asked, wary. The gnome had given up on the drum set, and was now pounding directly on the inside of Dylan’s skull.