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“Life dealt you some rough shit,” Travis said. “Why are you changing your mind now?” He paused for a second, as if answering his own question. “Oh, I get it. It’s her, isn’t it? Jesus, Finn, who is she?”
I leaned back on my seat on the sofa, staring at the ceiling. “She’s a brilliant musician, and she’s so fucking smart, and she’s funny. And she’s hot. I can’t wait for you to meet her. Actually, scratch that. You’re never allowed to look at her, ever.”
He laughed. “You don’t have to worry. It doesn’t matter how hot she is, I’d never break the bro code. Also, no more musician girlfriends for me. No actresses, no models. I’m so burned out I think my dick doesn’t work anymore. I need to date someone nice for a change.”
“Travis,” I pointed out, “you’re sitting by Andy Rockweller’s pool in his no doubt enormous mansion in L.A. Where are you going to meet a nice girl?”
“Beats me. I told you my dick isn’t making the decisions anymore, anyway. I think I’ll just wrap him up like a mummy and put him in a museum. He’s tired.”
“Maybe he’ll wake up for the right woman.”
“Who I’m not going to meet,” Travis concluded. “But back to your problem. We’ve established that my former agent is, in fact, trash who has possibly committed prosecutable crimes. Luckily for you, I’m not the only person to rely on in your situation. Send me the best song you have. I don’t know a good agent, but Andy Rockweller does.”
TWENTY-THREE
Juliet
I hadn’t seen my former bandmate Nicole in over a decade. The last time I saw her, we had gone out to see some live music in an attempt to rekindle the friendship we had before The Muffins broke up. But we hadn’t had much to talk about, and I knew as soon as I saw her inky black pupils that she was high.
We’d kept sporadically in touch since then. Nicole had gone through rehab and had moved back in with her parents in Seattle as part of her commitment to staying clean. I remembered Finn’s suggestion that maybe I should talk to my old bandmates, so I had messaged Nicole, told her I’d be in Seattle, and invited her to the show.
To my surprise, she had replied right away. She politely turned down my invitation to the show, probably because she thought it meant I wanted to party. But she agreed to meet me in Pike Place Market for a coffee before I had to go to sound check.
I wasn’t sure what to expect. The Muffins had fought a lot when we broke up, but that was so long ago. We had been kids, not sure what we were doing or where we wanted to go, two of us already sinking into addiction. I had been an angry girl who had sacrificed her relationships with her mother and her sister for a band that wasn’t ever going to make it and was about to stop existing altogether. To say I was in a bad headspace was an understatement.
I had thought, for a long time, that I resented my former bandmates, or that I no longer cared about them at all. But spending a weekend with Vicki and her friends had made me miss them. I didn’t want the long, crazy conversations or even the fun we’d had onstage, and I definitely didn’t want to relive the epic fights. I wanted to talk to someone who knew me like only a bandmate could know me—that unfathomable space of friendship, business relationship, and co-conspirator that only bandmates live in.
Nicole was wearing a flowered skirt over leggings and boots. A black sweater swathed her upper half, contrasting with her flawlessly pale skin. She had grown out her hair dye, and her natural brown hair was tied up with a scrunchie. She surprised me by hugging me hard, and when she pulled away, there were tears in her eyes.
“You look so good,” she said, swiping her thumbs under her eyelashes.
“So do you,” I replied, and we both knew that we weren’t just talking about looks.
“This is the best,” Nicole said. “I can’t believe you messaged me. Let’s go get a coffee.” She led me to the nearest coffee stand by taking my hand.
I squeezed her hand, and any feeling of awkwardness vanished with that one little gesture. I had jammed with this woman and dreamed with her and made plans to rule the world with her. I had held her hair while she threw up. I had cried in front of her. I had had screaming fights with her, and we’d let each other down. Some bandmates are just coworkers, but others are blood.
She talked as we ordered coffee. Living with her parents, she said, wasn’t as bad as she’d thought it would be. Her father was a bankruptcy lawyer—one of those guys you see on billboards—and he had her working part time at his office, filing and answering the phone. She wasn’t seeing anyone, but she was thinking about dating. She was going to regular group sessions. She was healthy.
“You’re fucking amazing,” I told her, meaning it. The stupid stuff I dealt with in my life was petty by comparison. Anyone who had the guts to fight addiction had accomplished more than me.
“No, you are,” Nicole said as we walked with our drinks. “Playing with the Road Kings at the Paramount? You did it. Other people just talk about it. The rest of us in the band just talked about it. But you? You made a career in music. You actually did it.”
The words gave me a strange, stiff feeling. I had always assumed I wanted musical success—to hit it big, though it would have to be on my own terms. Doing what I wanted and making a lot of money at it. But I hadn’t thought about it that way in a long time. Musical success was a poisonous snake, and there was no way to hold it without getting bitten. Finn had taught me that.
I had spent years hiding, and I wasn’t doing that anymore. But was I chasing success? That didn’t seem right, either.
“It’s a good gig,” I said to Nicole. “I can pay my rent. I like the music.”
“They’re decent guys?”
“Yeah, they are.”
“What about your own stuff? Are you writing anything?”
I shook my head. I still had the notebook I’d bought, unused. “I haven’t written in a long time. Songwriting was never my talent.”
“I thought you were pretty good.”
