Wild Open (6 page)

“Sure,” she said. She looked over at O’Connor. He couldn’t stop thinking about the way she had arched against him, her teeth digging into her lower lip.

“Leah, O’Connor is going to take you to meet Andrew,” Rushani announced.

James snorted. “Right. Assuming he’s conscious.” Rushani shot him a warning look, but James ignored it and barreled ahead. He was by far the least afraid of Rushani of anyone in the band. Including Andrew. “There’s no reason to subject Leah to him this early in the day. She’ll meet him tomorrow.”

“I think today would be good,” Rushani said, shooting invisible daggers at James with her eyes.

Despite the inherent awkwardness of the situation, O’Connor was amused. Rushani had no subtlety, and James had no awareness of social undercurrents. It was just good luck that the two of them usually agreed on things.

Leah resolved the whole debate by standing up and slinging her bag over her shoulder. “Let’s go meet this legendary Andrew. I’m sure he’ll be more afraid of me than I am of him.”

James let out a sharp bark of laughter. “Funny. Make sure you don’t stand too close, though. He smells.”

“He really doesn’t smell,” Rushani said.

“Only because you force him to shower,” James said.

The situation was deteriorating quickly. “Let’s go,” O’Connor said to Leah.

She followed him out of the room, leaving James and Rushani behind. Alone with her then, in the carpeted and warmly lit hallway, O’Connor raked his fingers through his hair and tried to think of the best way to phrase what he needed to say.

“I’m really sorry about all of this,” Leah said before he could speak. “I didn’t… I mean, obviously I didn’t know it was
you
, and then at the audition…”

“I know,” he said. “I didn’t think you did. I could tell—at the bar—I could tell you didn’t recognize me.”

She grinned, an unexpected flash of white teeth. He had forgotten how tall she was—tall enough to look him straight in the eye. He liked it. “Were your feelings a little hurt? Big rock star, and I thought you were just some random dude at a show…”

This was the worst situation possible. He
liked
her. He wanted to stand in the hallway and banter with her about his huge ego. He could already anticipate the conversation: someone would crack a dick joke, someone else would ask for proof…

He couldn’t. James would kill him. Rushani would behead the corpse to make sure he was dead.

Leah’s smile faded, and O’Connor realized he had taken too long to respond. “Don’t worry,” she said. “I’m not going to try to jump you on tour. It was a one-time thing. We can both pretend to be adults.”

“Right,” he said. He ran his hand through his hair again. It would be easy to act like he wasn’t interested at all, but that would be dishonest. He felt, somehow, like Leah deserved the truth from him. “Look. I’m really attracted to you. Nothing can happen on tour, and it won’t. But I don’t want you to think… Hooking up with strangers isn’t an everyday thing for me. I didn’t do it lightly. If circumstances were different… Well, but it is what it is.”

She was watching him, her chin ducked down a little. Her cheeks were pink. “Thanks,” she said. “Um. Thanks for saying that. I mean—it’s mutual. So. But we’ll be good.”

“I’d rather be bad,” he said automatically, and then winced and raised both hands in front of his face, staving off her protests. “I shouldn’t have said that. God.”

“You’re a big flirt,” she said, and all of her body language was screaming for him to kiss her. “I see how it is.”

“For fuck’s sake,” he said, and gave into temptation, one last time.

The kiss was brief and heated. Her hands slid beneath his T-shirt and rested on the small of his back. He was tempted to throw all caution to the wind, take her back to his room, and keep her in his bed for hours. But he was a musician before he was anything else, and the band came before the demands of his libido, no matter how urgent. No matter how good she felt pressed against him. So he drew back and rubbed his thumb over her lower lip and said, “One for the road.”

She closed her eyes. He watched her shoulders rise as she took a deep breath. Then she looked at him again, her brown eyes rich and dark, and said, “Right. Last time.” She took a step back and visibly straightened her spine. “Let’s go meet this Andrew character.”

Andrew’s room was at the end of the hallway, on the other side of James’ room. O’Connor knocked on the door and waited. It usually took a few minutes for Andrew to rouse himself.

“Are you sure he’s awake?” Leah asked.

“I’m sure he
isn’t
.” O’Connor knocked again. “This is usually Rushani’s job. I don’t have the patience for it.”

“I see,” Leah said, her eyebrows raised.

O’Connor sighed. “Look. I don’t know what James and Rushani told you. They’re a little prone to catastrophizing. It’s true that Andrew’s a mess, but it’s not like he’s totally nonfunctional. He’s still holding it together on stage. He puts on a great show. So as long as that keeps happening, there isn’t much we can do.”

“Your record contract,” Leah said.

He nodded. “Yeah. Exactly. They have our balls nailed to the wall. We’ll be on the road unless Andrew drops dead or—who knows, a maid finds a dead hooker in his hotel room. But it’s not—he’s just sleeping. He isn’t passed out in a puddle of his own vomit.” Which was probably true.
Probably
. “We aren’t
that
hardcore.” He and James weren’t, at any rate. But he didn’t feel the need to burden Leah with every sordid detail. She’d signed the contract; she would find out soon enough.

“That’s how you know you’ve made it,” she said, giving him that look he was beginning to recognize meant she was teasing him. “When you lose control of your basic bodily functions.”

“Big time rock stars are incontinent?” he asked, and knocked again. “I never knew.”

“Adult diapers all over the place,” she said. “You should see their tour buses.”

“I’m fucking coming,” Andrew yelled from inside. “Hold your goddamn horses, Rushani. Jesus fucking Christ.”

“He has a potty mouth,” O’Connor said to Leah, who raised one hand to cover her smile.

The deadbolt turned, and the door opened. Andrew scowled at them, his long hair falling in his face. He was wearing a pair of boxer shorts and nothing else, and O’Connor was unpleasantly surprised to see how thin he had gotten. His ribs protruded. A pattern of random bruises adorned his upper chest and shoulders. The placement was too weird to be from drug injections. Old hickeys, maybe.

“Who the fuck is this,” Andrew said.

“This is Leah,” O’Connor said. “Our new bassist. Because Kerrigan quit. Remember that?”

“Yeah, I fucking remember,” Andrew said. He tossed his hair over his shoulder and stuck out his hand. “Okay. Leah. Sure. Hi.”

Leah didn’t hesitate before shaking his hand, which improved O’Connor’s already pretty positive impression of her. He wasn’t sure he would have touched that sticky paw. “Hi, Andrew. It’s nice to meet you.”

“I fucking bet,” Andrew said. “I bet you heard all sorts of fucked up things about me. Well, here I am. Gawk away.”

This was a disaster. What had Rushani been thinking? O’Connor realized belatedly that she probably hadn’t intended for him to actually introduce Leah to Andrew. The whole thing had been a ploy to get him and Leah alone, so they could mutually promise not to screw each other. Christ. He’d fumbled it pretty badly, then. O’Connor gave Andrew another once-over. His eyes were bloodshot. His hands were trembling slightly.

For God’s sake. “Leah, why don’t you go back to Rushani’s room and see if there’s anything else she needs to discuss with you?”

Leah gave him a look like she knew exactly what she was doing, but she nodded and said, “Sure. I’ll see you later.”

O’Connor watched until she had gone back down the hallway and disappeared into Rushani’s room. Then he turned to Andrew and said, “Why don’t we take a little look at what you’ve been up to, you stupid piece of shit?”

“You stay out of my room,” Andrew protested.

O’Connor ignored him, and shouldered past him into the room. It was dark, the curtains still drawn, and it smelled like stale sweat. He flipped the light switch. The blankets were a tangled mess on the floor. The bare mattress was strewn with empty beer cans. And there, on the side table: a little pile of white powder, and a razor blade.

“You stupid piece of shit,” O’Connor said again. His gut twisted. The drinking he knew about, and the party drugs, but this—doing coke alone in a hotel room…

Andrew was still standing in the doorway. His hands were curled into fists at his sides. He looked away and shrugged, his mouth pinched tight.

“That’s it?” O’Connor asked. “Nothing to say for yourself?”

“Don’t tell Rushani,” Andrew said, in a small, pitiful voice, nothing at all like his earlier invective. He sounded like himself, then, for that one moment. Like the Andrew O’Connor remembered. The one who had been his friend.

“Fine,” O’Connor said. “I won’t. You’re going to tell her yourself.”

CHAPTER FIVE

Bryce drove her to the hotel late the next afternoon. Luka was working—one of his bands was playing a show that night, and he was helping them with set-up. She could have taken a cab, but Bryce offered, and she wasn’t opposed to the moral support.

They drove most of the way in silence¸ down Santa Monica Boulevard past the restaurants and palm trees, the mountains rising in the distance. Leah leaned her head against the passenger side window and thought about what she had gotten herself into.

“Are you excited?” Bryce asked finally, waiting at a red light.

“I guess,” Leah said. “I mean—the money will be nice. Being on stage again will be nice.”

“But?” Bryce asked.

She shrugged, slumping down further in her seat. The air conditioning in Bryce’s car was broken again, and her tank top stuck to the small of her back. “Band drama. Their lead singer is sort of… I met him yesterday. He’s on drugs, I think. The bassist quit because of it.” She had read every interview with the band she could get her hands on. It was a classic story: Andrew and O’Connor lived in the same dorm their freshman year at UIC and decided to start a band. They recruited Kerrigan and James through a classified ad and started playing local shows. Within a year, they had released their first album and gotten enough buzz for a record deal. Their second album produced a minor alt-radio hit and sold decently, and their third album went supernova. The interviews made them sound like a close-knit group of good friends, which might have been true at one point, but didn’t seem to be the case anymore. Band drama. Things fell apart.

Bryce sighed and tapped his fingers against the steering wheel. “We’ve been there before.”

“It’s going to be a shit-show.” Leah tried to smooth out an uneven crease dried into the hem of her shirt.

“But you agreed,” Bryce said. He glanced at her, and then the light turned green and he accelerated, eyes on the road once more.

“Masochism, I guess,” Leah said. “Or—I don’t know. I missed it. Playing music. Being on stage. Does that sound stupid? It’s not like I’m, you know, desperate for the audience to adore me or whatever—”

“No, I know,” Bryce said. “I know what you mean. I’m surprised it took you this long, to be honest. You were always… Look. For the rest of us, being in a band was a thing we did for a while. It was awesome, don’t get me wrong. We had a lot of fun. We did some seriously cool shit. But when it was over, we were all okay with it, you know? It was time. We were ready to move on to the next thing. But for you—Leah, there’s nothing in this world you were meant to do except make music.”

That was a long speech for Bryce, whose usual conversational style consisted of dry one-liners. “Am I really that transparent?”

He laughed. “I’ve known you for a long time, that’s all.” He reached over and patted her leg. “It’s only a month. Even if the lead singer is one hundred percent bananas, I think you can probably hang tough for that long.”

“You’re right,” she said, and took a deep breath. “Okay.”

The tour buses were parked in a lot beside the hotel: two of them, huge and shiny. Bryce pulled into the lot and parked his car. A couple of guys were loitering beside one of the buses, smoking cigarettes, and they glanced in the direction of the car before looking away again, bored or pretending to be. Leah didn’t recognize them. Roadies, probably.

She got out of the car. It was hot and bright, the sun a yellow disk edging toward the horizon. Bryce popped the trunk, and Leah hauled out her duffel and threadbare backpack, veterans of half a dozen tours, and her guitar in its beat-up case.

“You’ll do great, kid,” Bryce said, pulling her into a rough hug. “Don’t forget to call home. You know Luka worries.”

“I’m a big girl,” Leah said, a little nettled. “Luka needs to find a hobby.”

Bryce laughed. “Okay, message received. Don’t get into too much trouble. I’ll see you in a couple of months.”

He got back in the car, and Leah realized belatedly that he was going to leave her there. She had never been on a tour without Bryce, and she had subconsciously expected that he would follow her onto the bus and it would be just like always.