Summer (Four Seasons #2) (32 page)

Butler makes the introductions, and the aging rock stars grunt out the appropriate thanks for being here to support them. I get the feeling that they’re all very bored by meeting us, however, and when we leave I have a bad taste in my mouth.
 

“Well, that was fucked,” Paul says.
 

“Yeah. Not what I was expecting at all,” Cole agrees. “Never meet your idols. They’ll only end up disappointing you.

Marika meets us at the side of the stage, and I can tell from the look on her face that she knows exactly what’s going to go down once this show is over. She shoots me a wounded look and I almost feel sorry for her.

The sound of the crowd in the venue beyond is thunderous—thousands of people cheering, clapping, screaming and laughing in the darkness. Butler gives us a speech about what an amazing team we make and how this is merely the first of many amazing performances for us as a group, and I can see that he knows Marika is out after tonight, too. His graceless, last minute scrambling to try and make us see how awesome we are with Marika around is obvious and kind of pathetic.

I’m barely aware of all of this as it goes down, though. I’m nervous. Seriously freaking out. Not about the masses of people waiting for us on the other side of the stage door, or the fact that I’m going to be walking out in front of all of them without my guitar. No, I’m nervous about what I’m going to see when I look out into the madness and I find seats B23 and B24. Will she be there? Will she have come? Traveling from New York is a big deal, especially if the thought of seeing me makes her want to puke.

We all exchange freaked out expressions when the stage crew pull back the heavy black curtain for us to walk out onto the stage. Even Marika looks like she’s about to pass out. The roar of the crowd beyond is deafening. Of all the people to step out first from behind the curtain and into the light, Paul is the last I’d expect, and yet it
is
him, grinning as he goes, flipping us the bird over his shoulder. Cole next, then Pete, and then Marika. I’m the last. I’m holding onto the seconds as best I can, making them count, because one way or another I’ll know what Avery has decided when I make my way out onto that stage. I’ll know if she’s forgiven me and wants to give me another chance, or I’ll know if I’ve really and truly fucked things up and lost her forever.
 

“Am I going to have to wheel you out there myself?” Butler jibes.
 

I shake my head. “No. No, you’re not.” I go, and it’s the hardest thing I’ve ever had to do. The stage lights blind me momentarily, and it’s impossible to see anything at all for a second. Once my eyes grow accustomed to the glare, I see tier after tier of people in their seats, screaming and shouting. I find the seats I had allocated to Avery quickly; I spent the entire rehearsal earlier staring at them, wondering if I was going to be singing at them now, so my body is already attuned to where it needs to be facing.
 

Scanning down the row, down, down, down, my eyes settle on the spot where Avery should be and my heart stops in my chest.
 

There’s no one there. The seats are empty—the only empty seats in the entire venue.
 

She didn’t come.

THIRTY-ONE

LUKE

Rafferty would be so goddamn proud of me. I feel my anxious mood evaporating to be replaced by something far darker, and yet I don’t give in to it. I can’t this time. I have to finish this thing. I need to sing for D.M.F and I need to make sure I don’t fuck this up for the boys.
 

So I sing. I belt out the seven songs we’ve chosen to play, and after the second song, I stop staring at the seats I had set aside for Avery. It takes me that long to push the hurt out of my head and really focus on where I am and what I’m doing. Once I’ve done that, my body begins to buzz with excitement. This is real, for fuck’s sake. There are so many people in the crowd, grinning as they sing back the lyrics to our songs, and I have to pinch myself. Cole, Pete, Paul and Marika all play furiously, and together we sound amazing. It’s hard not to get caught up and swept away by the whole experience. When we finally hit the last chord of our last song, something has shifted inside me. I’ve held off for so long, reserving judgment on this whole musician-as-a-career thing, forcing myself not to grow attached to it. I’ve wanted to go home so badly, and Avery was a massive part of that. I wanted to go home for her, to see her, to be with her, and now she’s made her decision, it’s feels like a chord pulling me back toward New York has been severed.
 

I also wanted to go back to New York because I was driven by this intense need to help people. It was an urge that powered me every single day, and I never thought to question why. I never analyzed myself enough to know that
I
was still the one in need of help. Ever since I’ve been seeing Rafferty, I’ve realized that it’s far more important to make sure I’m okay before I try and rescue anyone else. I still miss my job at the NYPD, but my obsession with going home and putting that uniform back on has been swayed a little.
 

Up on this stage is where I need to be—writing and performing music is in my blood. It keeps my heart pumping. It gives energy to my soul.
 

We finish our set and come off stage, all five of us laughing like morons. Not a single one of us expect the cheers and screams for an encore. Cole looks like his eyes are about to bulge out of his head. “What the fuck are we gonna do?” he hisses. “We only prepared those seven songs.”

“You don’t do anything,” Butler tells us. “You’re the support act. You don’t get a fucking encore.” He’s bouncing on the balls of his feet, though; he’s just as stoked as we are about how our performance went. He throws an arm around Marika, hugging her to his side.
 

“You’re the best, doll. We couldn’t have done this without you,” he tells her.

Cole clears his throat, his eyebrows lifting in the middle. “Actually we could have. We definitely could have done it without her. We could have done it without you too, Butler. It might have taken us a while, but we would have gotten here.”

Butler’s face transforms into a blank, flat expression, his eyes traveling over the group as he clearly tries to discern what Cole’s talking about. Next to him, Marika rolls her eyes, shrugging out of Butler’s embrace. “Whatever. I know what’s coming next. You guys never planned on keeping me in the band once Fallen Saints was finished with. I’m not completely stupid. It’s your loss, though. I don’t want to play with a group of guys who hate women.”

“What the fuck?” Cole cranes his neck forward, blinking wildly at her. “What the fuck are you talking about—
a group of guys who hate women
? We
love
women. Me, especially.”

Marika grunts, scowling, her beautiful face turned ugly. “You love fucking them, maybe. Using them for sex isn’t the same as respecting them as people and as musicians. And those two,” she spits, stabbing her finger at Pete and Paul “Those two are clearly gay.”

Pete lets out a single bark of laughter. Cole turns to stare at Pete and Paul, and then he shrugs his shoulders. “Yeah. Of course they are. What of it? Does that make them misogynists?”

“Our best friends are both women,” Paul says. “We couldn’t hate women less.”

I’m reeling a little from the news that Pete and Paul are gay and are, in fact, in a relationship together—how the fuck did I miss that?—but it doesn’t matter. If they’re happy and they love each other then what the fuck does it matter if they’re both the same sex? Marika looks bored by the way the conversation is developing, though. She narrows her eyes at me last, growling under her breath. “And
you
. You don’t even know what you are. The last time you almost hooked up with a girl, you smashed your fist through a damn wall and nearly ruined your career. Ever since then you’ve been giving me dirty looks and shoving me away every single opportunity you get. You’ve
despised
having a girl in this band.”

I shake my head, laughter bubbling up out of my throat; she looks so fucking ridiculous with her cheeks puffed out and her hackles raised. Not so picture perfect now that she’s showing her true colors. “I was the one who said we should give you a shot, remember? You’re an amazing guitar player, and you did a great job of stepping into the breach when we needed someone. So no, I haven’t despised having a woman in the band at all, Marika. I just despise
you
. I despise you because you’re an ugly person on the inside, and I don’t like being manipulated, lied to or flat out played by someone in order for them to get their own way. It’s pathetic.”

Standing beside me, Cole holds his hand up in the air and I high five him. Butler looks like he’s about to have a heart attack. “Boys! Jesus, boys, are you out of your goddamn minds? You’ve just stepped off stage. We shouldn’t be having a conversation like this right now. We should be celebrating.”

“Whatever. It’s okay, Butler. I’ve already been picked up by Backyard Buzzards. Their guys recognize the value of a diverse line up.” Marika shoves Butler out of the way, pushing past him as she storms off down the corridor; Butler watches her go with his mouth hanging open. When he turns back to us, his face is ashen.

“Damn it all to hell. You have no idea how severely you’ve just stunted the band’s progress,” he snaps.
 

“We don’t want anything we haven’t earned ourselves,” Cole tells him. “This gig was a dream come true. It was awesome, and now we know what we’re working toward. If we have to bust our asses to get it for ourselves, then so be it.”

Butler mops sweat from his brow with the back of his hand. If people could literally blow steam out of their ears, he would be doing it right now. “You know, I took a punt on you guys when no one else was paying any attention. You think you weren’t a risk for me? Well, you were. You’re all ungrateful little sh—”

“Hey, Luke? Remember that gift I was talking about earlier?” Cole addresses me, but his eyes are locked on Butler.
 

I suddenly have a vague idea what my gift might be, and my face begins to twitch with the urge to smile. “Sure. That would be great.”.
 

“When our lawyers were going over the abso-fucking-lutely ridiculous contract you wanted us to sign that locked Marika into the band, I had him go over our original paperwork, too. Seems we were locked into an agreement that stated D.M.F. had to provide twelve tracks to the label for our record by September first, otherwise we were in breach and our agreement was null and void.”

Butler points his index finger and stabs it at Cole. “That was to protect the label, not you, asshole. It only voided the agreement if we were unhappy about not receiving the tracks on time. MVP agreed to be flexible on the album dates so you could rehearse for this performance. Therefore the contract still stands.”

“Not according to the contract,” Cole says, crossing his arms over his chest. “The date was never amended and we never signed off on any changes, so therefore we’re now free agents. And the rights to our songs revert back to us as well.”

I could fucking fist pump right now, but there’s something so satisfying about playing along with Cole’s super calm demeanor. I fold my arms across my chest to mirror my friend standing next to me. “You don’t say? Well, isn’t that interesting.”

“We invested money into D.M.F,” Butler splutters. “You think any other record labels are going to touch you after they hear about this? They’re going to run a mile.”

“Klaxon Records have already indicated interest,” Cole says. “And Embryonic.”

For all the money in the world, it looks like Butler is about to stamp his foot like a petulant child. “Fine. If that’s the way you want to play it, the four of you need to get out of here right now. You’re no longer welcome at this venue while MVP’s artists are playing here. Any instruments you’ve left at the recording studio will be seized and used as payment in lieu of our investment.”

“Don’t worry, man. All of our stuff was cleared out this afternoon.”

I have no idea who Cole got to fetch all of our gear, but I’m glad he did. Avery’s dad bought me the electric guitar I play now for my fourteenth birthday. To lose that would have been devastating. Cole really has been a Devious Mother Fucker today. I slap my hand on his back, biting the insides of my lips to stop myself from smiling.
 

“Security will be here in less than a minute,” Butler says. “I advise you to be off the property when they get here.”

“Don’t worry, dude. We’re in the wind,” Pete says.
 

The four of us walk out of the Staples Center, still covered in sweat from our performance, still high from what just went down.
 

Cole laughs like a child as he jumps into the passenger seat of my Fastback, and I just sit there for a moment, staring at the steering wheel. “Dude. Embryonic and Klaxon are both New York labels. You realize that?”
 

Cole gives me a
no shit
look. “That’s the whole point, right?

“Yeah. But…I don’t know. I mean…Avery. Avery didn’t come to the gig, man. New York isn’t as important now as it was yesterday.”
 

“Fuck you, you punk,” Cole says, slapping me on the shoulder. “Never say that again. New York is the center of the known universe and don’t you forget it.” He follows this up with a sad smile. “God, I’m sorry she didn’t show, Luke. I think I’m finally getting how much you love this girl. I’m just a heartless bastard. Sorry it’s taken me a while. You should stay open-minded, though. You never know what’s gonna go down when we get back there and you guys are waking up in the same city every morning.
Anything
could happen. In the meantime, let’s just get our asses back there, okay? I’m seriously jonesing for a proper NYC coffee.”

THIRTY-TWO

AVERY

My heart is in my mouth.
 

I’ve never been this nervous in my entire life. I’ve never committed a crime before, and I’ve never taken such a big risk. I feel like I could throw up at any second. I sit in silence in the unfamiliar apartment, trying to figure out where Luke may have sat and played his guitar when he was writing, where he may have read his Spiderman comics or listened to his music. The sheets on his bed are in a welter, messed up, but only on one side. I hover my hand an inch over the mattress where he’s been sleeping, sad in the knowledge that he’s been suffering on his own while he’s been here.