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Chapter Thirty-Two
Motherfucker. It was Celeste.
Remy’s stomach went fishbowl, his mouth tacky. The others shuffled aside when they arrived at his floor; he nodded faintly when Walter’s assistant said, “See you at the van in thirty.” He had thirty minutes before the show, and Celeste was the source, and if Celeste was the source, then it meant that Remywasthe leak after all. He’d told Val about Nashville. Val must have told Celeste, and now…
A string of whispered curse words rushed from his mouth as he hurried into his bedroom and dialed Celeste’s number. She didn’t answer, and he badly wanted to leave a tirading voicemail but worried he’d accidentally leak something else, given that he was apparently a sieve. He called Val, but his brother didn’t answer either. Of course—it was ten p.m. there; he was probably in the middle of a show.
“Val, call me. We need to talk about—we just need to talk,” Remy snarled into the phone before dropping it down on the bed. This was insane—it was an accident. Vivi had to know it was an accident—that made a difference, didn’t it? Even if it didn’t make a difference to the Vivi Swan Machine, Vivi the girl had to know he hadn’t meant to leak this.
Of course, confirming that it was him by way of Val by way of Celeste meant telling her what Celeste did for a living. The plausible deniability so carefully built into her anonymity wasn’t so plausible now that it was a factor in a relationship, not a contract.I should have told her about Celeste ages ago. I should have said something. I should have warned her. I shouldn’t have—
Well, if he was being entirely honest with himself, he shouldn’t have gotten involved with a girl with a boyfriend, much less a girl with a boyfriend and six platinum albums who was his boss.
There was nothing to do, no one to yell at or call, so he paced his hotel room until it came time for him to meet the rest of the band to drive over to the arena. They’d heard about the story by now and were quiet and snickery around Remy. David, at least, had the decency to clap him on the back in a “we’re not laughingatyou—not exactly” sort of way. Laurel and Ro looked absolutely giddy with the shock, though even they didn’t break the tension that festered throughout the van for the drive.
He isolated himself in the green room after changing into his show clothes, staring at his phone, trying to calm his stomach with crackers from the spread and failing. Even the roadies buzzing around him when he made his way onto the lift treated him like a leper, especially the one who hurried over with a pair of vintage sunglasses that still had the price tag on them from the thrift store.
“Here you go. Someone said you needed these,” the young woman said with a shrug.
“Right. Thanks,” Remy said blandly, plucking them from her fingers. He turned them over a few times in his hands then slid them over his eyes. They weren’t particularly dark, but the backstage area wasn’t particularly bright either, so they spun him into near blackness. He turned his stool to face the drum set and adjusted the monitors’ brightness so he could still see them through the shades.
“Remy, standby,” the roadie to the left called, and Remy nodded curtly. As his platform began to ascend, he instinctively looked to his right. He looked to Vivi.
She’d slid into her spot with little fanfare, and in the sunglasses-induced darkness, he couldn’t see the roadies surrounding her, readying her on the lift. He could, however, still see her—easily. She glowed, sparkles and light and glitter in the darkness, from her hair to her shoes to the brilliant white dress she was wearing. The roadies and camera crew filming this show stepped back, and Vivi’s cheek turned—
And she looked at him. For a millisecond, a glimpse of a moment he’d have missed had he blinked. But her eyes found his through the darkness and sunglasses and tension and air and world—
Then the look was gone, because Remy’s lift had ascended too far. Vivi’s gaze was sliced away by the stage, then the lights, then the cameras, the crowd of seventy-five thousand people.
When they were young and living at home, Val was the one who always turned the music up too loud. He was the one their parents scolded for destroying his hearing, he was the one that discovered the bass setting. He blasted choir music, then gospel, then classics when their parents were home, and music as offensive as possible when they weren’t.
“You can’t even hear it that way,” Remy had griped once.
“I can’t hear anything else this way,” Val had answered—well, shouted, since he’d turned up Black Sabbath until the old speaker hissed and crackled angrily on the beat.
It’d taken years for Remy to understand exactly what Val meant, because it’d taken years for Remy to badly need to drown out the world. But when Val started using, Remy began listening to music loud, louder, loudest, until his ears rang.
Now, in the arena, Remy was grateful for the crowd’s roar, for the drum set, for the millions in amps and speakers, for the way the sunglasses lifted his ear protection just enough so the chaos of it all flooded his eardrums and silenced his thoughts. He played as hard as he ever had, his eyes flashing between the monitors and David and Michael, keeping the beat, keeping the show on tempo as flawlessly as he always had.
The lights flared as the first half of the show ended, startling him back to a world without music to drown out all that had happened. Vivi’s platform descended first, as per usual; by the time Remy’s was back below the stage, she was gone, whisked away to her dressing room. He hooked the sunglasses around the cymbal stand and, hands slung in pockets, made his way back to the band’s room. His hands hurt—he couldn’t believe he’d played hard enough to makehishands hurt, given how long he’d been doing this. They vibrated and burned against his jeans.
“One more half and we’re all free!” David said when Remy shoved into the dressing room.
“Huh? Yeah. Yep. Nine more songs,” Remy said absently.
“You okay?” David asked.
“Yeah.”
“Man, I’m asking. Are you okay?”
Remy paused then nodded again.
“It’ll be over soon, kid,” Michael said. “Go home, get away from all this bullshit.”
“Yeah,” Remy said. Then he looked up.
It’d be over soon. Nine songs, and everything was going to change—that’d have been true regardless of the story about them leaking. This was the last, last, last bit of the tour, the final countdown, and his life was going to become something entirely different.
