4. Thomas
CHAPTER 4
Thomas
“For fuck’s sake—has Ash gone absolute fucking bonkers since having a second kid or what? I mean, does he know what he’s doing to us? And don’t just spout out at the rubbish about how everything he’s done so far’s turned to magic because every fucking cunt screws up now and then and he’s bound to, isn’t he?”
Kai has been going off like this for the best part of an hour, on our ride back to our house and since I cracked a beer open, sat down in front of the 85-inch TV screen and logged into my MMO.
I’ve been playing this online video game for over four years and am no closer to catching up to the latest patch as I was on day one, which was already several years after its release. But it’s just what I need right now: gorgeous graphics, a fantasy world, and an endlessly-sprawling story to take me out of the reality of Kai’s continued diatribe.
“I mean, does he know how hard it’s been to keep our own fans energized, and now along comes Whisper Girl and we’ve got just pull belief out of our arseholes that our crowds are going to play nice? The diehards who’ve been around since that shitty talent show are going to sniff her from a mile away and tell us to fuck off all over the internet. Or at the very least ask what we’ve been smoking to go on the road with her!”
I flip through some screens to check which quest is the least time-intensive but the most distracting for the moment. I wish he’d take his pitiful soliloquy elsewhere, like his bedroom with the door shut, or out onto a rowboat on the Thames or something because honestly, I’ve had enough.
But I stay quiet, choose a quest, and then end up farming minerals for twenty minutes anyhow. The beanbag chair beneath me sinks a bit as I shift around to reach for the bowl of crisps Nico brings through from the kitchen. I nod thanks and he plops down on the sofa behind me.
Amazingly, Holden is asleep on one end of it, though as usual, with his earbuds in. Either that or he’s pretending to in the hopes that Kai simmers the hell down. Holden sets a bowl of crisps down near Holden’s head for when he wakes up. Always the thoughtful and industrious one, Nico.
Through a mouthful of crisps, he asks, “Will you ever get tired of this game? And that’s not a leading question. Genuine curiosity, bro.”
I shake my head. “Haven’t yet. Don’t expect to.”
“Huh,” says Nico. They’ve seen me play it enough that sometimes they get invested in the stories and side quests and once I’m sure Holden teared up when one of the NPCs that I’ve played alongside from the start was ‘killed.’ When I told Holden the character came back awhile later wearing a mask and was revealed to have somehow survived, Holden’s eyes widened and he high-fived me as though this was an actual thrill.
I found it sad at the time, but I’ve been playing this game for the best part of a decade.
For me it’s like a really engrossing book that I can partly control, and that so far, has no end. Sometimes you read a book and you want to know more about a side character or a memory someone’s mentioned, and in an MMO like this, you get to go off chasing that curiosity. So more like an interactive book than “just a game.”
And it keeps me from the overwhelm of what we actually do for a living. Because sometimes this industry can chew you up then pick bits of you out of its teeth and spit you in the goddamned sink.
Let’s take Kai, Exhibit A.
He slams a fist on the granite kitchen countertop in our open-plan ground floor, but his tirade has worn down slightly. He’s leaning half his arse on a bar stool there, and his hair is a raked-over mess.
“Go get yourself some fresh air, my man. There’s nothing we can do to change what’s coming,” comes Holden’s sleepy voice. “We either accept it and find the best way to deal, or we have an absolute shitshow of a four-month tour. Let’s go with the former, yeah?” He sits up and rubs his head. I shoot him a grateful look because historically, Holden is the one who calms Kai’s tantrums down.
Kai Hartley is a wonderful bloke, don’t get me wrong. He’s not a diva. He doesn’t demand chartreuse M&Ms in dressing rooms, and he doesn’t need to be the center of attention. He’s a damn good songwriter, singer, guitarist, and frontman. He’s loyal to a fault, and he’s always there when any of us has misgivings, issues, or just needs a mental health break.
But when he’s fired up about something, almost nothing can calm him down. Somehow, Holden’s managed to do it. But something about Holden’s laid-back Aussie attitude manages to lower all our stress-levels on a regular basis. He’s like a walking meditation app, although I don’t think he himself meditates. He just sees life as a gift, every day as this entirely magical event, and he never seems to take anything too seriously.
Except food. Boy loves to eat.
I switch from farming minerals to fishing, and still haven’t started in on the chosen side quest. The other player I tend to run with on these types of quests isn’t logged in today, so I carry on with other tasks.
“Did you see her face? When she said, don’t interfere with my fans? What does she expect us to do, try to win them over from her so she’s left with nothing? Those kids are going to leave the crowd the second her set’s over anyhow!” says Kai from the kitchen.
“Dude, honestly, she’s got a right to be pissed,” mumbles Holden. “Look what we did to her.”
Kai scoffs. “But obviously it didn’t matter—she’s about to open for us .”
“We are not all that,” Nico pipes up. “We are not Arcadia. We are not scoring number one singles every album. We’re a mid-level touring rock band with fans that would fly to the moon for us. But still, it is not as though she’s won the lottery.” His voice is neutral, eyes glued to his phone.
Nico’s forever texting Enzo Flynn, drummer of Arcadia Echo and his ex-bandmate and cousin. I think sometimes he’s wistful about their days playing together, because sure, Enzo’s hit the jackpot with Arcadia. They’re way more successful than us if you want to compare apples and oranges, but they’ve got more experience than us by about ten years.
And that’s the problem with studying psychology at university. Even if you don’t use it, it changes the way you look at everyone around you. Especially the people you spend the most time with.
I launch upwards on the beanbag as Kai plops down next to me, sprawling out, arms behind his head as he leans back.
“Jesus, Kai, you nearly sent Thomas into outer space.” Nico snorts.
I reach forward, unflustered, and take a swig of my lager. I turn toward Kai with a small smile. “Cock.”
“There another fucking matter,” he says. His voice is calmed somewhat but he’s trying to grasp his somber speech vibes from earlier. “I don’t suppose you ball-bags noticed she’s an Omega.”
I stop pressing buttons on the controller, but I don’t turn to face him. Nico’s crisp-crunching stops, and I sense Holden sit up behind me.
“And how exactly do you know that?” asks Nico.
“Did Ash tell you that?” Holden asks.
“You’re off the pills. Aren’t you?” I say, my voice quietest but I don’t look at him.
“You swore after Nyah you’d never go off suppressants,” says Holden. Not accusingly, but in an interested, surprised sort of way.
Kai doesn’t answer right away but I can just about hear his jaw grinding.
We’ve all been on rut suppressants since things with Nyah went wrong. She was the bassist of Kitestring, the band who opened for us on our first tour. We all wanted her from day one. She was starlight, and energy, and everything a pop-rock singer should be. And after four months of being our Omega, of waiting for the tour to end so we could move in together and begin proper nesting, she went for our collective jugular and cut us off. Out of nowhere. Nearly fucking killed our pack and our band.
It was only after a while we learned it was all a game to her. A way to give the tour the most chemistry possible. So we all decided—we told Ash—we would never work with another all-female band, we would never work with another Omega, and we would never get romantically involved with another musician again.
We’d still love an Omega, maybe . If we were really fucking lucky. But not one in the industry, never again. That, we’d all sworn on. And in fact, we’d said we’d stay on rut suppressants whenever we toured.
I thought we’d all started up the meds again as usual when rehearsals for this tour started. But if Kai knows for certain that Jesamine Jacobs is an Omega, that means he’s not taking them. It means he can scent her.
Unless … he wasn’t on them during the talent show three years ago, and learned her status at that time. The rest of us were on them because the show was filmed in-between British gigs on our last European tour. So either way, Kai’s lied to us. And this is not a good sign.
Sadly, he’s not the only one.