Chapter Three
A ll hell broke loose the moment Knight’s Blood arrived.
Jacob paced outside their dressing room, shouting at his phone. He was a wolfish, round man with a hard mouth, dressed in cheap jeans and a knock-off designer shirt. Gray streaked his short beard and Cobain-era hair.
Makeup artists and roadies jilted between rooms, and Kingston, Chain Reaction’s drummer, clipped Aiden’s shoulder as he stormed by, talking hurriedly to his AirPods.
“I don’t know where the fuck Shay is. Yes, I’m serious.
He’s gone, dude. Gone . Both of them! Mickey’s cancelling the rest of the tour.
We’ll regroup once we find replacements. ”
Anxiety closed around Aiden like a beartrap.
When Georgia said, “Aiden,” it was Shay from last night, saying his name with a knife in his gut.
Aiden’s back smacked the wall, lungs heaving.
Focus . Georgia snapped at him, “Keep it together,” and Jacob pointed at the door, “Get inside, get, get ,” and Dylan swatted him on the shoulder, “You good, man?” All their voices blended, turned, became the recently deceased.
“Yeah, I’m. . .” Aiden forced a smile. “I’m fine—good, I’m great. ”
In the dressing room, Thomas threw himself into the nearest chair. “Can you believe this? We’re playing a sold-out arena,” he said, cackling.
“You’re not, actually,” Jacob corrected.
“You’re playing a previously sold-out arena.
Chain’s issuing refunds and placeholders for their next L.A.
gig. But! People will still show. And that means you need to play like Ozzy Osbourne is sitting in the front fucking row.
” He pointed at Georgia first. “You’ve got an extended set list, right?
” She shook her head, doe eyed. “ Jesus Christ . Get one started and get it to the stage crew! Now! ” Then he whirled around, jabbing his finger at Thomas.
“Do not choke. If you choke, I’ll run you over with my car. Understood?”
“C’mon, Jake, we’ve got this,” Thomas said.
Jacob gave Aiden a once over, and said, “You look like you crawled out of a dumpster.”
Aiden smacked his lips, nodding. “That’s because I did.”
Like any low-balling talent manager, Jacob Hill was a gruff, half-honest dickwad who lived vicariously through the bands he represented.
He’d looked after Knight’s Blood for five years.
Signed them when Aiden was seventeen and starting HRT.
Booked shows, scheduled podcast interviews, put some money in their pockets, and most importantly, stuck around.
Jacob perched his hands on his hips and glanced at Dylan. “Ditch the man-bun, Tarzan.”
Dylan rolled his eyes and let his hair down. “Okay, so, what next? We’ve got enough songs for a solid set, but not nearly enough to headline.”
Georgia typed furiously on her phone. “We can do a few covers. Thomas, you know Bark at the Moon, yeah? We’ll fit that in after Reign and then maybe Black Hole Sun… We need to close with Glory, no doubt.”
Thomas pulled a face. “Do people not know Bark at the Moon? ”
“That’ll work,” Aiden said.
“Yeah, it has to.” She thumbed at the screen for another second. “Jake, you’ve got the set list incoming. Forwarding to the stage manager, too. She’ll pass it off to the venue staff.”
“Good.” Jacob shifted his deep-set eyes around the room. “Now listen, shit-stains. You’ve got this, all right? Fuck Chain Reaction. Fuck Shay Bennett. Fuck all those washed-up, bullshit glam-goth punks at Warped who wouldn’t give you the time of day. This is your shot. Don’t throw it away.”
Dylan quirked his head. “Did you just quote Hamilton?”
“It’s a goddamn musical masterpiece,” Jacob bellowed. “Get to sound check, then get to makeup, and do not—I am not even kidding—talk to any reporters until after the show. No one knows why Shay took the piss, and everyone wants answers. We don’t have them. Understood?”
“So, he’s seriously just. . . gone?” Georgia asked. Worry tinged her voice.
“Is that actually surprising?” Dylan countered.
Jacob made for the door. “Sound check! Go! ”
Aiden straightened his back. He needed to get out of his head, focus on the set, forget about Shay and last night and what he’d done.
I bargained for this . He ignored the high-pitch whistle traveling from to ear to ear.
This is it—I did this—someone heard me .
He nudged Dylan with his elbow and gestured to his front pocket.
Dylan made an indignant noise, but pulled out the vial, cut two lines on a fold-out refreshments table, and snorted one while Aiden snorted the other.
Thomas joined. Georgia did, too. But after three middle-school-sized lines, she shook her head.
“We can do this, guys,” she said, and capped the vial. “But let’s not get cocky. Put that shit away for now. Get too lifted and the crash’ll be worse. Feel me?”
Aiden clenched his jaw and nodded. “Yeah, let’s do this.”
Sound check was a fucking disaster.
Thomas couldn’t hold the throaty notes from Knight’s Blood’s first album, and Aiden quivered as he pushed on scratchy guitar strings, holding them against the matte-black neck.
His grip gave out, his palm slickened, his calloused fingertips landed in the wrong places.
At one point, he imagined slamming his guitar against the stage, watching his life’s work splinter and break, and walking back to the Ocean Grove trailhead.
Digging at the ground. Sucking pig’s blood out of the dirt.
Piecing the feathers back together. The thought consumed him—taking it back, taking it all back.
“What the hell is goin’ on with you?” Georgia sent a drumstick whirling through the air. It struck Aiden on the shoulder. She threw another, smacking the side of his head.
He drew in a slow, lengthy breath, shifting his jaw from side to side. “I’m hungry,” he blurted. He wasn’t. “And fuckin’ exhausted, okay? Give me a break.”
Georgia snared him in a fierce glare. “You’re not hungry and you’re not tired. You’re scared and that’s fine, but if you don’t get your shit together, I’m gonna shove a drumstick so far up your ass you’ll choke on it.”
“Maybe we don’t threaten the most violently unstable member of the group with literal violence, Georgia,” Dylan said, tuning his bass.
“Fuck you, I’m perfectly fucking stable,” Aiden snapped.
He pointed his guitar pick at Dylan, then at Georgia.
“ And fuck you, I’m not scared. I’m fine.
It’s fine. This’ll be fine.” He turned his outstretched hand toward Thomas.
“And you haven’t said anything yet, but fuck you, too.
Get the lyrics right or I’ll kick you in the nuts. ”
Thomas bobbed his head, nodding dramatically. “Glad to see we’re already screwing this up, guys. Awesome. Super blessed to be here. Love this for us.”
Georgia hung her head, defeated. Dylan, as unfazed as ever, held out his arms, waiting.
Aiden strummed the opening notes of Glory. “C’mon, let’s get this right. One. . . Two. . .”
It wasn’t great, but they managed. Georgia hit every beat, Dylan swayed as he played, and Thomas belted the lyrics. Aiden stared at the floor, mouthing along as Thomas sang, and let himself get lost in that carved out space between the empty arena and the chaos backstage.
Some musicians turned sound into church.
Like faith, music became an outlet, a pew to rest on, a place to pray.
Something born into. An adopted do-over.
But for Aiden, music lodged inside him like a fucking teratoma.
Hair and teeth and bone. A second self, growing somewhere it shouldn’t.
If he didn’t play, that ugly tumor would chew through his skin, starving and alive, shaped like someone the world thought he should’ve been.
With his guitar strap snug on his shoulder, strings biting at his fingers, and crunchy notes kicking off the chorus, Aiden Moore became fearless and permanent, and not a single thing less.
After Glory, they ran through Reign and hit a few chords from Bark at the Moon, then the crew ushered them backstage, scrambling to replace Chain Reaction’s elaborate set with simple instruments and well-worn festival banners.
Aiden clung to the adrenaline burning in his chest. The knowing—stage, music, audience, performance—tapped his limbic brain, urging him to fixate on something besides Shay Bennett .
In the designated makeup studio, Thomas sat in a studio chair while the cosmetologist studied her color correction kit.
Dylan, a bare-faced beauty, always nakedly himself and freshly moisturized, fiddled with his phone.
Georgia and Aiden worked on themselves and each other.
Georgia dabbed thick ochre concealer under his eyes, blurring faint purplish circles, and he glued individual lashes to her eyelids, careful not to ruin her dagger-pointed cat-eye.
While he avoided his reflection, smearing drugstore foundation called Desert Heat or Volcano Babe or some other bullshit stand-in for Mexicali Brown onto his roughened cheeks, Georgia dug at black eyeshadow with the back of a makeup brush, stirring the inky powder into mahogany foundation.
Cosmetic brands went hard for light-skinned Black folks and white-passing Latinas, but at least his makeup matched enough to blend with bronzer.
He envied Georgia sometimes. How she refused to ditch her dignity when the world designed itself against her.
Like this, full-lipped, hard-edged, and sculpted, Aiden appeared remade.
Dangerous, maybe. Pupils blown, muscles tight, heartbeat going, going, gone.
After Thomas was efficiently primped, the cosmetologist came to stand behind Aiden.
She fingered a glob of fruit scented wax into her palm and raked her tattooed hands through his hair.
Acrylic nails scraped his scalp. The sensation shot downward, knotting in his groin, then he felt Shay again, clutching his waist, and the feeling worsened.
“You’re mighty handsome, kid,” she said, smoothing leftover product through his shorn undercut. She patted his shoulders. “Anything else I can do for you?”
Aiden met her eyes in the mirror. “Know where I can get a drink?”
“Green room’s down the hall on the right. Saw some champagne, Pbr, a few bottles.”
“Cool, thanks. ”
“Lookin’ forward to the show.” She stashed the hair product in her train case. Her modest heels clopped the floor as she left.
Aiden shrugged toward the door. “Drinks? Oh, c’mon, don’t look at me like that—I’m talking, like, two beers. No harm, no foul.”
“Two beers,” Georgia said, sternly.
Thomas grinned, poking at his elevated, spiky hair. Front-man ego permeated the room. “I could go for a shot, honestly.”
“Yeah, same,” Dylan said. “I don’t think I’ve been this nervous since our first Warped Tour.”
“Well, this isn’t Warped Tour. That’s for damn sure,” Georgia said.
They walked to the Green Room together, dodging crew and security.
Aiden flicked a two-finger wave at Jacob who sat at a high-top table with his phone perched against his ear.
“No,” Jacob said, snorting, “no, I don’t give a rat’s ass where Bennett fucked off to.
This is about ticketholders and your now-empty venue.
You want a show? I’ve got a band.” Jacob lowered his phone, smothering the speaker against his lap.
He snapped his fingers at Aiden. “If you get sloppy, I’ll shoot you in the kneecap with a nail gun. I’m serious.”
Aiden flashed his palms. “Damn, I just got here. Calm down.”
Thomas and Dylan took shots. Georgia drank champagne and snapped playful group photos for Instagram.
Aiden pounded his first beer, tossed the empty can in the recycling bin, and cracked another.
The cold liquid coursed in a line, sinking into his stomach.
He picked at the snack table. Logically, he knew he needed to eat, but the cocaine coating the back of his throat insisted otherwise.
His nerves did, too. He swallowed a few grapes, nibbled on a star-shaped cheese and turkey sandwich, and drank the rest of his second beer.
The moment he approached the cooler, Georgia swatted his wrist. Like a live-in fucking sponsor.
“ Two ,” she said, and sighed through her nose.
“Jesus, Mom , relax.”
“What’s going on? This is a lot, even for you.
You almost slept through sound check, you smell like a distillery, and now you’re tossing back beers like we’re at a frat party.
” She pinned him with a cautious glance, brows furrowed, mouth pinched.
“Listen, I get it, okay? I’m sorta worried about him, too, but?—”
“This is not about Shay,” Aiden snapped, too forcefully, like a pitbull on a choke-chain.
Georgia tipped her head, eyeing him skeptically. Light slid across her silver bridge piercing. “Okay, Aiden. Sure. If it’s not about him, then what’s it about?”
“Nothing. Stop hounding me.”
“Give it a rest until the opener goes on. Deal?”
“Yeah, deal, whatever.”
“You sure you’re okay?”
“Yes, Georgia, I’m fine . I promise.”
She knocked him with her elbow. “We’ve got this, yeah?” She held his gaze, arching a tapered brow. “ Yeah? ”
“Yeah, we’ve got this. We always do,” he said.
But Shay’s name conjured a storm. He faced the snack table again, pretending to browse an array of mozzarella skewers and chopped fruit.
Airy discomfort pushed on his lungs, shortening his breath.
Not anxiety, exactly. Worse. More potent.
Paranoia, and grief, and the terrible, no-good satisfaction lurking underneath.
Aiden had sold a soul for the opportunity to walk on stage and take Shay’s place.
An opportunity Shay had stolen. An opportunity he wouldn’t get again.
He swallowed, glanced over his shoulder, saw that Georgia was busy with her phone, and snatched another beer.
He’d drown Shay if he had to. Build a graveyard between coronary arteries and bury him there.
Live a haunted life. But he would live , regardless.
He would seize the dream he’d been denied, and after a while, Shay would calcify in his chest. He’d become an old, sore wound—self-inflicted and survivable.
Like any ex-almost. Like any goddamn ghost.
Aiden tipped the can against his mouth. You did this, he thought, and balled his free hand into a fist. I did this.