Chapter 19
Chapter Nineteen
GIA
Do not come home pregnant.
Mama’s famous last words, fired like a warning shot, the morning I left for Europe. But I’m not stupid about risk. When I float through the doors of the hotel tonight, birth control will be locked and loaded. For thirty francs, I bought the world’s tiniest box of condoms.
Nothing’s cheap in Switzerland, including peace of mind.
I shake off a shiver, waiting for the tram on Bahnhofstrasse. It’s cold but sunny, the perfect weather for a wander around the lake before sound check. I close my eyes for a moment, anticipation running riot through my veins.
JC didn’t mind when I cut out early from the bar, saying I had some personal shopping to do.
He seemed rattled, and I felt a near-blinding relief when he said he couldn’t wait for tonight.
I was worried I poked too hard, pressing for details.
But JC opened up more than he ever has. He put himself back together almost immediately, shutting our conversation down abruptly, his eyes doing a careful circuit of my face.
It almost felt like he didn’t trust me to know his truths.
Oh, JC. I want to sink my teeth into you and never let go. Tell me all your secrets. Burn me into your soul.
I’m so lost in my thoughts about tonight that I almost miss my tram. I scramble on board, the doors nipping closed behind me. Two women my age sit on the bench next to me, laughing at some private joke. My heart turns heavy. Not a word from Audrie, and where is my BFF when I need her?
I look at my phone, cold and silent. Just as I lie to myself, saying it doesn’t matter, the screen lights up with a FaceTime request. My silly high-pitched laugh is the sound of all the stress leaving my body.
Some other petty Gia might ghost Audrie to prove a point, but this Gia needs advice to guide me through the biggest event of my life.
I barely get out a “Hey, girl,” before she unloads, words tumbling out on top of each other.
“Oh my god, Gigi! I’m so, so sorry. Long story, but Paul surprised me with this trip. We took a float plane, a helicopter, and then a boat to this remote lodge. I lost my phone and just got it back from the float plane people. But holy fuck, fuck, fuck, you guys are lighting it up. Talk to me!!!”
Like a little girl handed the biggest gift at her birthday party, I can’t stop grinning. Why did I ever think she’d bail on me?
I dish every juicy tidbit in glorious, graphic detail—the cities, the crowds, JC, and me. She laughs until she snorts at the story of JC diving onto the floor for a fake contact hunt.
“You two are dirty. He sounds fun.” Audrie sighs, a little wistfully, if I’m not mistaken.
“Paul isn’t fun?”
“Of course,” she quickly says, “but it’s millionaire fun. Those people.”
“Do you feel like you don’t belong?”
She clears her throat before answering, “Sometimes. I’m younger than all his friends, and most of them are married with kids. I mean, they’re cool. We’re having fun.” She plasters on a smile, but I can read between the lines.
The Seattle tech dudes speak a different language; they're a different breed. Paul and his hedge fund buddies drunkenly stumbled into our gig at The Showbox in downtown Seattle on a lark. He practically drooled on Audrie, all starry-eyed with lust. Got her number and made his move. Not saying what they have together isn’t real, but if you fall in love with a guitar player, and a year later, music is nowhere in her life…
Audrie flashes a smile. “Enough about me. When are you two making it official?”
I suddenly feel all sparkly. “JC got us a hotel room tonight.”
“What? Are you shitting me?”
“I’m sending you a link to the hotel. It’s insane. Like James Bond would stay there.”
The tram stops at Bürkliplatz, a quaint lakeside park. I exit and hurry across the street, drinking in the majestic mountains, the lake at my feet. Will it all look and feel different tomorrow? I feel that tug of inevitability. A profound sense that my life is changing, like hers.
“Gigi!” Audrie screeches. The eagle has landed. “This is a castle!”
“Right? Fully prepared that they frisk us at the front door.”
“Are you ready?” she asks, the intonation clear.
I take a deep breath. She can read me like a book. “I think so.”
“He knows, right?”
“I’m not saying anything until it's too late. When he can’t back out.”
She peers at me from the screen with that mothering look she’s perfected over the years. “Cashing in a v-card is a big deal. And from everything you’ve told me, JC strikes me as the kind of guy who wants to know in advance.”
She’s right, and it deflates my bubble of confidence. But it’s taken us six months to get here, and I’d hate to be completely undone by a little thing like virginity. More importantly, how does that conversation start organically?
Audrie pulls me back with a sharp, “Hello?”
“Yeah, you’re right,” I say distractedly. “I’ll bring it up.”
Meaning, I’ll drift through the moment slightly drunk. I can’t lose this night to fear.
“What about supplies?” she presses.
I pull a face. It’s like she’s ticking off boxes on her Virgin Checklist. “I’m not showing up with a suitcase full of dildos and lube, if that’s what you mean.”
“No, silly.” Her voice quiets. “You might bleed after.”
I plunk myself onto a bench, rubbing my forehead. Great. Now there’s that to worry about. Stains on hotel bedsheets come with the territory; bright red ones, however, scream very unsexy.
And alarming if you don’t expect it.
Just my luck. My plan to lie naked in JC’s arms as a beautifully deflowered princess now involves worrying about leakage. I wonder if all the new-age feminists who claim god is a woman thought their arguments through.
“If you don’t hear from me until tomorrow,” I say, “it’s all good.”
Audrie chuckles. I texted her once at ten in the morning, asking how her date the night before went, and the little slut texted back, “I’m still on it.”
“If it’s all good,” she says with a wink, “your phone is the last thing you’ll be thinking about.”
Three hours later, we finish sound check, and I’m ready for some hot tea with lemon to soothe my throat. Maybe a hot shower, because the one in our dressing room is twice the size of the one on our tour bus.
On the way into the bathroom, I bump into Brady, literally, as he exits a stall.
“Hey. How was your red light special?”
“Okay.” He shrugs, nonchalant. “You've seen one pair of tits, you’ve seen them all.”
I laugh. “Am I talking to the real Brady?”
He fluffs his hair in the mirror and says flatly, “Do you even care?”
I try to find his eyes in the mirror, but he evades mine. Barely said a word to me during sound check. “Anything you want to talk about?”
Brady spins around, lighting up a spliff he’d tucked behind his ear. After a monster inhale, he blows a long stream of smoke and offers me a hit. Not sure why—drugs aren’t my thing.
I decline, and he says, “Kayla pinged me again. She’d be fire for the band.”
Kayla is Kayla Sloane, one of the guitarists we auditioned before JC committed. She’s a shredder and seems like a good egg. But still…
“I said we wait until after the tour,” I remind him. “I don’t have the bandwidth to think about it.”
His eyes narrow. “Is there some side deal you and JC are cooking up? Sawyer coming to town feels awfully convenient.”
We all crammed into a taxi to get here, JC mentioning our brunch with Sawyer tomorrow. I don’t remember much of the conversation, in all honesty. Not with my leg touching his. How is he so warm?
And how many times do I need to defend myself to Tai and Brady? “Sawyer’s coming to schmooze promoters,” I inform him. “There are no secret deals, no side bullshit. No one is making moves on my band.”
Brady flicks ash onto the floor. “You mean our band.”
“Yes,” I say tightly. “Our band.”
We engage in another weird round of eye contact wrestling. I’m in no mood to pick a fight, and Brady’s in a mood I can’t figure out. Feels like a big, dramatic Love Island moment is about to hit.
“JC told Tai about tonight,” he finally says. “Hotel lovebirds. You too embarrassed to tell me?”
My cheeks go hot. I didn’t broadcast that for a reason. Now it feels like another black mark against me.
“Look on the bright side,” I say. “The world is your shag oyster. Just stay out of my bunk.”
Brady takes another hit of the joint, talking through his exhale. “Oh, so the rules fly out the window when you’re getting it on?”
“Seriously?”
“Be careful, Gia.”
I find his eyes, dark and stormy. “Why are you saying it like that?”
“Because JC doesn’t need you or us. And you know the biz. A million Sawyers looking you in the eye while lying through their teeth. Ruthless. Scheming. Grabbing what they can.”
“JC isn’t like that,” I insist.
He shuffles closer, smelling like stale beer and attitude. “What makes you so sure?” he asks. “A guy like him doesn’t need to slum it with a newbie band unless he sees leverage.” His mouth twitches. “I’m not saying I don’t like him…”
“I don’t have time for this,” I cut in, all my happiness from earlier suddenly evaporated. “You and Tai better stop trying to poison me against JC. Just because he’s more talented than both of you doesn’t mean he has ulterior motives.”
Brady looks at me for a long moment, joint dangling comically from his lips. Just me and his gold glitter vest, moccasins, and miles of tanned torso.
“Makes sense you’d cozy up to the guy who’s fast-tracking you to where you want to be,” he scoffs. “Can’t credibly claim to be surprised, can I?”
The strange light in his eyes gives me a shivery little charge of trepidation. I think of his sloppy kiss last year—I assumed it was nothing but a drunk fumble. Lines get crossed all the time between band members.
Half the time, it means nothing.
But the way he’s looking at me means everything.
“Hey,” my voice hitches, “listen—”
“Guess I’m SOL, huh?” he interrupts. “No trust fund or bougie Porsche. No mysterious legacy to get you all wet?”
He butts out the joint in the sink with vicious stabs. I rein in my anger because I realize Brady’s bile is coming from a jealous place. But I need to alter the path this rock is rolling down.
“I like JC for who he is, not for his money or what he owns. And your sex life is more ADHD than you. You know I’m a commitment girl.”
“Committed to a guy who’s almost twice your age?” He rolls his eyes. “Jesus, Gia. Major daddy vibes.”
My mind’s a sudden whirlwind, with no anchor for all my spinning thoughts. The vibration in my gut says don’t bring it up, but the words spill out before I can stop them.
“You don’t know the full story.”
He leans against the counter, crossing one ankle over the other. “Lay it on me, sister.”
I hesitate, swallowing down the tangle in my throat. Can’t come up with a lie to save my life. “He wrote this song. A killer single. Perfect for us. And we have this dare going…”
Brady erupts into laughter. “A dare? You serious? Let me guess… transactional fucking?” He sees me blush and howls again, louder. “Wow. You’re more of a cold-hearted bitch than I thought.”
Somewhere in the hall, I can hear Shae barking at the roadies, but she’s not loud enough to drown out the words that sting like acid.
“Brady!” I shove him hard. “That is a shit thing to say. Why are you being such an ass?”
He shoves back harder. Meaner. “Because you deserve it.”
I stagger backward, a flurry of emotions rushing through me at warp speed. Brady, violent with me?
“You write songs in your sleep, Gia,” he spits out.
“You don’t need his. And I hate to break this news, but no musician worth their salt gives up their music for pussy.
Especially not a Trenton who lives in the back end of the industry.
” He smiles, an evil grin that spreads across his entire face like a nasty oil slick.
“But I would pay money to see his face when his finger’s knuckle-deep in your ass and you whip out a contract and pen. ”
“Fuck you.” I’m shaking. Reviled. I feel so small and helpless.
But he keeps on going, crushing salt into the wound.
“That chick in the front row you were talking about earlier? The older one? There’s something between them, one hundred percent.
If I could pick it up from behind the kit, I'm pretty sure you did. JC’s no saint. Watch your back. And fuck you too.”
He kicks the door open and storms out.
I feel all the blood drain from my face. Brady and I go back to high school, before he slept with every gender and pronoun. I had no clue he liked me that way. But the black pain gripping my heart isn’t about him.
It’s about JC.
He is a mania of mine, and I can never get enough, but he isn’t plotting, is he? And if he knows that woman, why didn’t he cop to it? I looked right at him this morning, asking the question. But he dodged a direct answer, devastatingly hot with his bedhead and sleepy eyes.
Maybe Brady’s messing with me just because he can, because he’s twenty-three, jealous, and not above Asshole 101.
Besides, JC has no reason to lie to me.
Or does he?