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“I mean, look at what our lives have become. Drinking and fighting and paying for things that we’ve done. My marriage fell apart because I didn’t give up the booze. And now that I have stopped, I’m still paying for everything that I did.”
“You didn’t even do anything that bad. It’s not like you cheated on her or anything.”
“I left her at home to go partying day in, day out. That’s why things fell apart.”
Maddox grunted, downing the rest of his beer. He looked at me as his eyebrows drew together. “You regret getting married?”
I sighed, staring out through our large windows towards the pool. “I don’t think so,” I sighed. “I was just an idiot before. Might still be one.”
“You think Angela’ll ever let up and be more reasonable with all this?”
My heart squeezed. “Probably not.”
Maddox was quiet for a while, and I sighed.
“I really need this tour to be successful,” I said quietly. “You’ll be kicking me out soon, if this keeps up. Bank account is getting pretty low.”
Maddox put his hand on my shoulder. “I’m not kicking you out. This place is paid for, anyways, remember? No mortgage, no problem.”
I chuckled. “Are you saying you’ll cover property taxes and maintenance on this place if I’m on my ass.”
“You’re a brother to me, Carter.” He shrugged. “Plus, if things get bad I’ll just get some crooked accountant to do some tax fraud for us or something.”
I laughed as Maddox cracked another beer and grinned.
“Nah,” he said. “It’ll work out.”
I looked at the number at the bottom of the invoice in my hands. It had way too many zeros on the end of it for me to be comfortable thinking that everything would magically work out.
“We just really need to pull our fucking heads out of our asses and play some music again. This album launch has to be big.”
“Don’t worry, bro,” Maddox said, taking another sip of beer. He looked as hungover as ever. “It will be. We have that new PR team coming in tonight to watch us rehearse. Apparently they have it all planned out.”
I scoffed. “Yeah, because PR teams have been really good for us lately.”
Maddox just shrugged, and walked over to the couch. He collapsed on it, and I knew he’d be there until we left for rehearsal.
“You do remember how to play the drums, don’t you?” Garrett said to Maddox, his dark eyes even darker. Maddox was entering the shaky part of his hangover, and I could tell he was in bad shape. I leaned my hands on my bass guitar and watched the two of them face off.
Maddox was sweating buckets, sitting shirtless behind his drum set. Garrett was standing behind the microphone, looking back at Maddox with fire in his eyes.
All three of us had strong personalities. We’d grown up together, and we’d all been born leaders. We were always able to put it aside for the band, though. For the music. In the rehearsal space, in the studio, on stage—we were equals.
But right now, it didn’t seem that way. I knew our new PR team would be there any minute, and at this stage we wouldn’t have anything to play for them.
Our band was a mess. We were falling apart.
“Let’s just take it from the top,” Garrett grumbled, eyeing both of us. “Then we can go out and get a fucking beer.”
Maddox grunted, and Garrett turned back to his microphone.
We sucked. We were out of sync, out of tune, out of everything. By the end of the song, the three of us eyed each other for a long moment.
“How the fuck are we supposed to go on a world tour if we can’t even play our own fucking music?” Garrett grumbled.
I grunted. “He’s just fucking hungover, man.”
Maddox made a noise in agreement.
