Chapter 2.
Chase
One foot kicked up on the makeup counter, other on the floor.
Flannel shirt tossed aside, tank drenched in sweat.
The audience still roars in my ears despite the piercing silence in this dressing room. All the lights are shut off except one, a lamp plugged in next to me. The mirror, covered up by setlists and tour pics, blocking my reflection. I don’t like looking at it. It’s a thing.
No matter how hard I try, I can’t stop seeing his face. His soft, unrelenting eyes, sensitive and wrecked … What I need isn’t another fucking guy singing about his feelings. What the fuck about mine?
I keep nipping at the end of my thumb, running it across my lips, growing more annoyed by the second at those words.
Why is music lately so fucking trite and shallow?
He didn’t even give mine a chance.
Some soulless producer-written shell of a song …
The heck? I write all my own stuff. Every single tune.
Alleged not-so-country-anymore sellout …
The door pops open. My sweaty-faced manager Ian appears, cheeks rosier than usual, glasses at the end of his nose, his sniper eyes landing on me like a set of crosshairs. “What was that?”
I lift my chin. “There a prize if I get your question right?”
“That wasn’t the opening number. Wasn’t even on the setlist. That was …” He looks like he’s fighting constipation to get out his next word, then gives up. “What was that?”
I manipulate the leg of a nearby chair with my free foot and nudge it his way. “Take a seat. I can smell your stress from here.”
Ian’s lips pinch together. That’s his tell for swallowing a fuck-ton of things he’d much rather say.
He gathers whatever’s left of his patience and accepts my invite.
“Might as well.” He shuts the door gently behind him, then says, “Do you still stash beer in one of these bins? No? It’s dark in here.
Your hospitality needs work,” before finally taking a seat across from me.
“Tell me.” I keep nipping on my thumb between my words. “Do you think I’m just a guy who sings about his feelings?”
His eyebrows fly over his glasses. “Come again?”
“Have I become a pretentious bag of dicks with a guitar? Are people sick of me? Am I a sellout? Give me your honest take.”
“Whoa, where’s this coming from? Is this about that song?”
I study his face for a sec, biting at my thumb. “Never mind.” I kick my foot down off the counter and get up to pace the room. It’s the only way I can clear my head: when I’m moving. Seems like I’m always on the move lately. Like I’m outrunning something.
“Chase … Naomi and her light cues were thrown off. Band had to pivot, too. And you know one of the label reps was in the crowd. I don’t get why you didn’t clear it with Dee before you—” After a beat, he lets out a sigh and indulges me. “It was nuanced.”
I stop near a clothing rack. “Nuanced?”
“And short.” He stares ahead of himself. “It was a short and … and nuanced song.”
“Do me a favor, Ian. Be less of a machine. Give it to me real.” I come up to his chair and crouch down to his level. “How’d it make you feel?”
He blinks at me. “It … felt … like the old Chase.”
I bring my thumb to my lips again, contemplating his answer, unsure whether it’s a compliment or a warning.
He adjusts his glasses and adopts a soft tone. “Is it something you’re working on in private? Or … an old tune? Dee and Emmett think it’s an unfinished song you left off the Hate Me album.”
Unfinished? My gaze drops to the boot I kicked off. Then I sit on the floor right next to it, my back finding the leg of Ian’s chair as I hug one of my knees to my chest, pensive. Unfinished …
“When’d you write it?” he asks.
I rub a finger over my chin. “I didn’t.”
Ian stirs. “That was a cover song?”
“No.”
His face crinkles up. “You … improvised it?”
“From a conversation that happened seven and a half minutes before I took the stage.”
“Chase …”
“I just wanted to know how it made you feel, that’s all.”
He sits up with a huff. “What’re you really asking here?”
I realize what I’m asking is something he can’t quite answer.
I don’t know why I always seek validation from him, other than he’s sorta held my career by the balls for the last six years.
I owe him and his machine brain so much, if not everything.
Sure, it takes a village, but it also takes someone to gather that village, and Ian is a mastermind of getting the right people together.
This tour has a dream team of staff and crew who’ve never once let me down.
Feels lately I’m the only one doing any letting down.
But no matter who I ask after a show, we killed it even if we sucked or something was off.
My singing’s top notch. Our stage manager Dee cried in the wings.
Head of security Rob mouthed every lyric.
Like everyone’s been ordered not to tell the truth.
Like one bad thought is enough to topple our empire.
I used to feel grateful for this echo chamber of flattery. Inside it, I’m safe. Always brilliant. Never a missed note. I’m on top of the world. Who wouldn’t want that?
That guy in the hallway …
Can’t say the last time anyone’s ever spoken to me like that.
“I need the truth,” I finally say to the floor, thinking of him.
I feel Ian’s eyes on me even when I’m not looking. That’s how deep it runs between us, I guess.
He puts a hand on my shoulder. “Chase … we’re past that.”
“Past the truth?”
“Past the old Chase.” He leans forward. “Don’t step backward.
Your song … it felt … too raw. Smoky bar vibes.
Your starting days. All country, folk songs, and poetry.
It felt … small.” His grip on my shoulder turns into a gentle rub.
“We don’t want small. We want big. Sold-out-stadium Chase.
Genre-shattering rock star Chase. Chase in a mansion on the coast. Chase Holt breaking every heart he sings to.
Chase Holt … chasin’ it all the way to the top. ”
It’s our mantra. Or his. The match he strikes to keep my booty climbing up and up and up … all the way to the top.
But to the top of what?
I’m still wondering that long after our crew finishes loading everything onto the truck.
Ian’s words now dancing around inside my head with the other ones from the guy in the hall.
Every time someone walks past me and says the show was great, I smile back, let it drown out the words: alleged not-so-country-anymore sellout.
I get a thumbs up from a guitar tech and accept it graciously as I hear them again: another fucking guy singing about his feelings.
Dee saunters by with her trusty clipboard and gives me a funny winky face, adoring me as usual, and I try not to hear: let that guy whine about his achy little heart to a crowd of devoted fans.
I catch Rob and ask if we had any lingering fans by the door this show.
He tells me we had a few, then excuses himself to help with something on the bus.
I’m left wondering if he’s understating or overstating the actual amount.
For all we know, we had a crowd of fifty screamers and jiggling breasts wanting my autograph all over them.
Or we had one sad soul with a pen and a soggy napkin.
Truth doesn’t really mean much around here.
It’s all perception. You’re only winning if you believe you are.
Let those fans adore his clichéd love songs …
I would’ve signed the soggy napkin, by the way. Haven’t had the joy of signing any soggy napkins or jiggling boobs or albums or guitars waiting in the wings for three years, thanks to a stalker situation after our first hit. That was followed by a death threat.
The world keeps feeling farther away.
Less guys mentally breaking down in back halls to encounter.
I stand by the bus staring at a dimly-lit parking lot, pavement slick and shiny from the come-and-go rain we apparently got. Just can’t help but scan the distance, wondering if said guy might still be lingering somewhere.
What the fuck about mine?
My mind’s still stuck on him even after we’ve taken off, on the road again, and the familiar hum of the bus engine fills my ears.
Our bassist Wily, long hair, ripped jeans, and fuzzy bunny slippers, sits at the dinette with one of his late-night snacks he warmed up, a double-fudge Pop-Tart, doom-scrolling on his phone.
He hasn’t said much since the show, but he’s had a lot on his mind lately worrying about his unhinged brother going through a divorce.
Splayed over the side couch is Fiona, our keyboardist and backup singer, cowboy hat covering her face and arms crossed over her chest. Some point between now and 2AM, she’ll relocate to her bunk.
She had caught me in one of the back halls right after the show and asked, “The hell was that opener?” I shrugged back and said, “Something new,” and after a second’s thought, she frowned and replied, “Open in E flat major, not G minor. It’s a love song for cryin’ out loud.
” Then she popped a jellybean in her mouth—she always has a handful after any show, her eternal lifeblood—before slipping off to the green room to gossip with one of the crew.
I’m still chewing on that mental note of hers, hearing the start of the song brighter than before.
If the song is ever allowed to have wings before Ian goes and clips them.
Sitting cross-legged on a cushy red chair across from Fiona’s long side couch is our newest member Raj, bleached hair, tiny loop earrings, drumming the air intensely with his fingers.
The guy’s always honing his skills, never at rest. Though the moment he sees me glancing his way across the bus, he stops to smile back and give a thumbs up for some reason before returning to his lively air drumming.
“Lovable puppy dog energy” works for drums, Ian said to me when Raj joined us last year.
He replaced our old drummer Cam who left us for a death metal band called Havoc Heaven. To each his own?
“You’re not going rogue, are you?”