Chapter 4
Pictures of our band hung on the wall of our rehearsal studio, a hodgepodge of us from the beginning to more recent, though not one picture was taken in the last six months.
My attention zeroed in on my favorite. It was taken here, all of us looking utterly exhausted, but elation had smiles on our faces, a fire behind our eyes. Ziggy’s arm draped around me, my head on his shoulder, while the other guys surrounded us. We had just finished lining tracks for our first LP.
It was before we made a name for ourselves, before our record label started to really put demands on us. We were free to make music, find our sound, and be creative, and when we laid The Devil Takes Me, we knew we made magic.
It was before you realized your dreams, and the best time in your life was not the marker you set but all the stuff before it. There is a disappointment when you achieve all you’ve ever wanted and find it didn’t fill the hole you thought it would. Success didn’t make you happy. The process is where creative people thrive.
It was where Ziggy was the happiest. He was just another incredible talent, a spark in this industry, who went out too quickly.
My finger glided over his face, heart-wrenching agony yanking a sob up my throat. I missed him so much. I felt so lost without him. Ziggy. A fissure cracked my chest, the tips of my fingers tracing his lazy smile.
I sensed a presence behind me before I felt a touch on my shoulder. Whipping around, a gasp hitched my lungs, my head craning back, surprise pooling anger through me.
I expected Emmit or one of the boys. Not him.
“I’m not here to take his place.”
Drix signed, nodding at the wall to Ziggy.
“Good, because no one ever will. Especially you.”
I spat back with my hands.
“I don’t know what the fuck I’ve done to you.”
Drix’s mouth moved with his fingers, fury stepping him closer, looming over me. “But I’m not here to play games.”
The fucking audacity.
“Are you kidding me?”
My hands fired back. I also verbalized, but my emotions were bubbling over too much to care if I was enunciating clearly. “You don’t know what you did? Oh, right, you probably don’t remember. Just another pathetic girl you messed around with.”
He sucked harshly through his nose.
“Are you seriously talking about our little hook-up seven years ago? We made out. That was it.”
His mouth moved faster than his hands, dropping some of the sentence. “We were kids. Plus, you were the one who walked away from me.”
“Did you think I would stay? Waiting for you on your bed like a groupie?”
I fired back. “After what you said about me?”
“What the fuck are you talking about?”
“I was there!”
My arms expressed my fury. “I ‘overheard’ what you and Corey said about me.”
Corey was the lead singer of Velvet Kings and probably one of the most arrogant assholes I’d ever met, besides Drix. Maybe it was why he left; their egos couldn’t fit in one band. “What was it you said? Having not only a girl drummer in your band would weaken any chances of making it, but she was also a deaf bitch on top of that!”
Drix stepped back like I slapped him, which I really should have. I should have hit him back then. But I was seventeen, so young and insecure, I ran instead of fighting back. It took me a long time not to believe what they said. That I was good enough. Back then, when we were all just starting out, I had this major crush on Drix. I thought we had this deep, magical connection when we played together. I wanted to be part of their band, played my ass off when we all got together, drinking and hanging out.
Drix finally took notice of me one night after we played together. He told me how amazing I was. Our kissing quickly heated up, and he left me on his bed to get condoms.
Fifteen minutes I waited until I snuck out looking for him. I found him with Corey and the rest of the band, still just in his boxers, a condom package in his hand.
“Dude, you’re seriously gonna fuck that deaf bitch?”
Corey laughed. He was facing in the direction where I hid behind a wall. “It’s obvious she has such a crush on you, but how hard up are you?”
“Shut the fuck up.”
Drix’s eyebrows furrowed, his profile harder to read.
“I mean, she’s smokin’ hot, but still. Won’t it be weird? I guess she’ll sign when she calls out your name.”
The rest of the band laughed at his hurtful joke. “Well, go ahead and bang her, get something useful from her. She’s not joining this band.”
Corey peered over at the other members, their heads bobbing in unison. “I mean, a girl drummer in a rock band? No fucking way we want some deaf bitch part of us. A cockblocker when we’re gonna have swarms of women on us.”
He stalked over to Drix, slapping him on the shoulder. “Models and celebrities will be begging to suck our cocks. We don’t want some girl with us. Especially a deaf one.”
“You can’t deny she’s pretty good.”
Drix shrugged one shoulder like it was an afterthought.
“You want pretty good, or you want amazing?”
Corey asked. “I want this band to make it big. Do you really trust a girl drummer to play with us? Seriously?”
I could feel the air holding in my lungs, my hope pinned on him. The guy had me so smitten it was like I was one big fluttering drunk butterfly, and I wasn’t known to be girly or swoony over any guy.
“Drix?”
Corey said his name, an eyebrow curving. “You getting a crush on the deaf girl?”
“Fuck, no.”
Drix shook his head. “She’s just an easy fuck. Nothing else.”
In one sentence, my heart and confidence splintered into pieces.
I took off and never went back. At that moment, my hatred for The Velvet Kings began, along with my drive to be the best.
They splintered me, but I didn’t break. And I can’t deny they pushed me to work harder. I practiced relentlessly, never leaving the studio until I had it perfect. And perfection wasn’t something an artist ever found. Ziggy helped me develop a system where I was so in tune with everything that no one could say I was good for a “girl”
or a “deaf drummer.”
No, I was just fucking brilliant, period.
“You don’t remember telling him I was just an easy fuck and nothing else?”
My hands moved so fast and violently, his forehead creased, trying to keep up. When my statement registered, I watched his frame stiffen, his expression walling up.
“You were there?”
He stopped signing, his voice vibrating against my skin.
“Yes. I was there to learn that behind my back, you all thought I was just a pathetic deaf girl who had no business being a drummer.”
“That’s not?—”
“Shut. Up.”
I cut him off, rage raking through me. “Now it’s me who doesn’t want you here. Who gets to reject you!”
“Echo—”
“No! Get the fuck away, Drix.”
The shout hummed in my vocals, my hands aching at how fast I was signing. “Why are you even here?”
“Because…”
He shifted on his feet, turning his head away from me. I hated when people did that, cutting me off from their facial reactions. Frustrated, I reached up, grabbed his chin, and yanked his face back to me to read his lips. The feel of his beard between my fingers, his mouth so close, and how his cognac eyes looked at me took me back to his bed so many years ago. I recalled the way his mouth felt on mine, his hands touching my body, the skillful way his tongue twined with mine. It was the same magic when we played together, but it exploded even more in the bedroom.
I sucked in, dropping my hands away as if he burned me. “Actually, I don’t want to know,”
I spoke with my hands. “Just go back to where you belong.”
I turned, starting to stride out of the room.
Fingers wrapped around my arm, yanking me back, my spine hitting the wall, knocking a few pictures off, firing heat between my thighs. My nipples hardened as Drix’s physique pressed into mine. His huge hand slid up my neck, forcing my head to look up at him.
“I’m not going anywhere, drummer girl.”
He spoke so close I could feel the heat from his lips brush against my own, stealing the air from my lungs. “Get used to it.”
His gaze dropped to my mouth. Slowly, he slid his thumb over to my lip ring, tugging on it. A primal need for him to kiss me, to pick me up, slide my pants down and fuck me against the wall overpowered me. A yearning so deep I felt both disgust and desire.
As if he had read my thoughts, I could feel a vibration coming from his chest. His jaw crunched down, a nerve in his cheek twitching before he pushed away.
Shoulders hunched forward, he ran a hand through his hair as he stomped out of the room. The door vibrated the wall when he slammed it.
Oxygen heaved into my lungs, and my wobbly legs dropped me down the wall, shocked at my own reaction.
After seven years of despising him, he could walk into the room, touch me, and I was legless on the floor. Going against everything I was.
I was known for being a badass. For being the one the men crawled to, not the other way around. But there had always been something about Drix. Something that pulled me to him like a magnet, and I couldn’t seem to fight no matter what my brain told me, even after this long.
Outvoted, Drix Decker was now my bandmate, someone I would have to communicate with the most.
My eyes caught on a picture that fell, my shaky fingers picking it up. Liquid blurred my vision, a sob barking in my chest.
Broken glass cut across Ziggy’s face, like he knew we were moving on. Drix’s face would start replacing these pictures, and slowly, Ziggy would disappear.
From the band, the wall. And my memories?