26. Tom Cobalt
TOM COBALT
“What is this?” I sniff the green smoothie.
My head weighs ten hundred pounds, and my throat is raw.
Last night can only be referred to as a night of epic fuckups.
Never in my most reckless imagination did I predict our mid-album celebration would morph into Phoenix meeting RJ… and then Beckett…and then Charlie.
Wincing ignites pain in my skull, but I can’t stop myself.
What’s worse: I can’t even remember the entire night. But fragments keep invading my head—and none of them are good.
Eliot pushes the glass closer to my lips. “Just drink it, brother.”
I’m on his gothic, canopied bed wearing my clothes from last night.
Eliot has on navy-blue joggers since it’s still morning.
I slump on the mound of pillows against the ornate headboard.
The deep red walls and thick, heavy bedding of his room are more soothing than the squawk of Mister Feathers.
I literally cannot take a cockatoo laughing in my face right now.
I massage my temple and contemplate sipping the smoothie. I’m positive I passed out on Eliot’s bed. Oh…no. I freeze as another memory crashes into me.
Strong arms curled under my legs and around my back. I faintly remember resting my head against a firm chest. No. No. Nooooo. My heart beats rapidly.
“You let Phoenix St. Pierre carry me?” I’m going to die. Like right now. Where the fuck do I find a casket at this precious hour?
Eliot props a shoulder on his bedpost, a plate in one hand. “Sadly, that wasn’t me. But had I been there, I would’ve been able to recount the experience in vivid detail for you.”
“Oh great.” I smear a hand down my face. “Had you been there, you would’ve carried me, right?” I already know the answer.
“I would’ve insisted he carry you over the threshold—”
“Noooo,” I groan and bang my head backward, scrunching my eyes closed. “I think I’m going to die.”
“Not without me, brother.” I feel his grin before I open one eye and see his mouth curving upward.
I’d smile back if I weren’t mid-wince again.
“Dude. He carried me into a bedroom. Like this is stuff I would rather witness and not be black-out for.” I daze at Eliot’s raven painting, but I’m just imagining Phoenix bringing me here, laying me on this bed.
Did he adjust the pillow behind my neck?
Was he the one who put a washcloth on my forehead?
Because I woke up with a damp cloth soaking under my bicep.
Like it’d slipped off me in the middle of the night.
Eliot stares knowingly at me. His deep blue eyes glitter.
So I just say, “I bet he was hot.”
“Beckett did say he was persistent.”
I nod a ton. “That is hot.” I think about this.
“I mean, I bet he had to convince Beckett and Charlie to carry me. Beckett would’ve wanted to bring me inside himself.
” Eliot agrees, and we’re both thankful Beckett didn’t try to lift me.
Of course he could’ve. His whole job is hoisting bodies in the fucking air, but last thing he needs is to accidentally sustain a back injury because I was too drunk to make it home on two feet.
Charlie might actually kill me if I inadvertently hurt Beckett to that extent. One time Eliot and I singed Beckett’s leg with a firecracker, and the way Charlie reacted, you’d think we chopped off his ankle. Granted, he was twelve. But still.
Plate in his grasp, Eliot climbs onto the bed, stepping to the center. Then he plops down beside me, crosses his ankles, and turns his head to meet my eyes. “Mistake number one was not inviting me to your night out. It would’ve never been forgetful.”
His quip lifts my mouth into a smile. “Agreed. Life is more memorable with you at my side.” I swish the smoothie and slip him an apology with my eyes. “I know you wanted to meet my drummer before Charlie.”
“It’s not the first time Charlie has beat me to the punch,” Eliot says. “It will be the last time, though.” He seems unconcerned.
“Yeah, it definitely will be,” I say with all my confidence, then I frown at a thought. “Hey, you don’t think they were spying on me?”
“Luna and I didn’t tell anyone you’d be at The Trench,” Eliot says. “It was probably just a coincidence.”
Yeah. Eliot and Luna were the only ones I informed. I’d been afraid Charlie and Beckett would ruin my night and show up unannounced to pester my drummer. Looks like that happened anyway.
Eliot pushes the plate of bacon and toast toward me. No eggs, since he knows I will vomit at the first sight of them when I’m hungover. He’s too good to me. Truly. I take a piece of bacon and chew it slowly. “Does the apartment smell like murdered pig?”
“A bit. Ben usually doesn’t care if we cook meat.”
“Key word: usually. We’re living in unusual times, Eliot Alice.” I pass him a piece of bacon, and he accepts it. Then I plug my nose and swig the green smoothie. It goes down way thicker than a normal smoothie should, but I trust Eliot not to poison me. He’d sooner drink a poisoned draft himself.
Eliot stares at the plate he set on the bed. “The smell of bacon won’t make him run away. I believe that.” His concern downpours like a thunderstorm. “Do you?”
“No,” I say truthfully, pressing my skull to the headboard. “I’m still scared shitless of doing something that’ll set him off. Maybe you and Charlie feel like you could find him if he leaves again…but I…I don’t know if I could.”
“What does Dr. Carlton say?” Eliot asks. He knows I have regular virtual appointments with my therapist. Sometimes I just like hearing myself talk—I don’t even know if I do a lot of listening.
“Can’t live in fear. Can’t control my brother.
Blah blah blah.” I rip another chunk of bacon with my teeth.
“I like Dad’s advice better. He says that the more we try to bend an outcome to our will, the harder it will snap back.
I’m sure he was trying to stop me from trying so hard, but it just makes me brace for impact. ”
“Sounds like him.” Eliot grins while tossing his half-eaten piece of bacon back onto the plate. “The destroyer of chaos. The harbinger of calm.”
“The antithesis of us. I doubt he would’ve found himself in my situation.”
“What else can you remember?”
For the next ten minutes, I rehash the events in reverse.
“…then RJ bolted when Beckett told him to go. Like in my head, he was Noah Lyles fast.” I stare off.
“And you know, I didn’t even really care?
I kept feeling this powerful emotion all night.
” I nod dazedly to myself. “It was never doubting Phoenix would bail on me. I knew that he would stay before he even said a thing.”
Eliot begins to smile. “Should I name the emotion screaming at you?”
“Pass.” I share his smile, then I exhale a deep breath. “Dude, I don’t need to know what it’s called to know I’ve never felt it before him.” I chew bacon slowly. “How the downward spiral started is the worst part.”
“How so?”
I swallow the bacon like a jagged lump. I remember the dance floor.
How much I wanted him. “It all started with me,” I admit.
“Phoenix almost kissed me, and I basically said no.” I glance over at Eliot’s deepening frown.
“I’m afraid to risk the album.” I let out a laugh.
“And I know what you’re going to say.” I wiggle my nubby piece of bacon at him.
“Risk it all for a kiss, brother. I would’ve. ”
“I should be following your lead,” Eliot admits, more tensely. “Instead of you always following mine.” He brings his knees up and rests an elbow on one. His head in hand while he flashes a grin at me, but I see through the bright veneer.
“What happened, Eliot?” My gut sinks. I set the smoothie on the nightstand, having to shove some manuscripts on the floor for space. He won’t care.
“Wesley Rochester happened. He tried to provoke me at work. He was at the theater. Apparently, he’s a friend of the director, and he was invited to attend the workshop.”
The Rochesters own a billion-dollar media corporation that just bought Celebrity Crush, a trash tabloid that loves to drag my family through the mud. We went to prep school with some of them in Philly, and so it feels personal—their obsession with using our family as headline fodder.
Wesley’s also just a complete prick. It’s not often we run into him, so my jaw gradually unhinges. “What the fuck?”
“Exactly. This play could blow up my entire career,” Eliot confirms. “To be seen whether the blow up is good or bad.”
“It’s going to be good, dude,” I try to assure.
He glances at the door to see it’s shut. “With the amount of press surrounding Amadeus, my reputation in the theatre community hinges on it. I can’t drop out for any reason, especially to avoid him. I don’t want to give that conceited human bacteria the satisfaction of knowing he ran me out.”
“What’d he say to you?”
“That he was there at the Hamptons last summer.” He rubs his lips back and forth, wrath flaming his eyes. I can almost feel the heat radiating off him. He rips at a thread in the comforter. “He reminded me what I watched.”
I cover my face with my palms. “Dude. No way.” My brain hurts. My chest hurts. Everything fucking hurts.
Eliot had been invited to a summer pool party in the Hamptons, hosted by some hedge fund manager. The upper echelon. Despite my family being loaded, we don’t typically socialize with other billionaires.
We might cross paths at ballets, charity galas, other high society functions, but our parents preferred to raise us in Philadelphia next to our aunts, uncles, and cousins on a handful of acres in a gated neighborhood.
We didn’t grow up in a seven-story brownstone in the Upper East Side with play dates arranged by nannies.
There were no birthdays at private clubs or forcing us to take fencing classes and piano lessons. Our mom grew up that way and despised it, so she’s been determined to keep us on the periphery of those social circles.
Eliot has always loved stepping into that world. He calls it his greatest performance. Where he gets to work on his acting chops and pretend to be someone else for the night.
Last summer, I went with him to the Hamptons party. In solidarity. We both thought it’d be the usual affair: free champagne, horrible conversation, and fake laughs.
I spent most of my time outside where the DJ was taking music requests. I wasn’t inside with Eliot when the host dropped down a projector screen and started playing porn.
Specifically, our parents’ porn tapes.
They were illegally filmed having sex decades ago. They’d been in their early twenties, and the guy who filmed them went to jail. But the internet is forever.
I’ve been fortunate enough to never catch a glimpse of it. Charlie said he stumbled on a thumbnail once. And Eliot, to this day, will tell everyone who listens that he’s never set eyes on five seconds of the footage.
That would have been true up until last summer.
I still remember him striding casually to the pool, hands in his pockets, like nothing was wrong. “Time to leave, brother,” he whispered to me. I just barely detected the fury in his eyes. Subtle, enflamed shards of ire.
The car ride home, he told me he’d given them zero reaction as the porn played. He’d grabbed his glass of wine and taken a calm sip, acted like Bloomberg was playing, then went outside to find me.
The only thing keeping Eliot calm was knowing he had to get me out of there. He didn’t want me to see or hear our parents having sex.
There is no amount of therapy that’d erase the damage for me. I’ve thanked him a billion times. For Eliot—his brain is a fortress. Whatever tries to plague him, he will battle away with purpose and rage.
So it’s not shocking that the Hamptons is surfacing volatile emotions in my brother. It’s not shocking a Rochester is attached to those same feelings.
Eliot lets go of the unraveling comforter thread. “The bastard wouldn’t shut up about me watching their porn tapes. He probably wanted me to hit him, and if it weren’t this play, if it weren’t my entire career on the line, I would’ve had him on the floor.”
“So what can we do now?” I ask. “Track him down?”
“Nothing.” Eliot stares hard at a gold-framed oil painting on his wall; an identical one is hung in my bedroom.
It’s called Destruction and depicts the sack of an ancient Romanesque city, a civilization up in flames.
“I retaliate, and I’ll be fired, Tom. Volatility has been my whole life.
When things go right, I figure out how to blow them up and not in the good way. ”
“Yeah, I know the feeling,” I tell him.
We share a heavy look. I think it’s the first time in our lives we’re both together in this position, trying desperately not to be the caustic forces that’ll topple our ambitions.
My phone buzzes on the comforter, and I flip over the screen to see a text.
PHOENIX WOLFGANG
Let’s reschedule. We don’t need to work this morning when you’re hungover.
My stomach roils. “He thinks I’m hungover.”
“Tell him you’re radiant. Full of life. All truths.”
“Indeed.” I comb a hand through my bedhead hair. “I mean, does he not know who I am? I can defeat a hangover.”
“Precisely. Remind him.” Eliot leans into my shoulder, but he’s not reading the text. It’s just habit. So I read Phoenix’s exact message out loud, and then he grins, “Didn’t you say he was a raging dick? Because that sounded on the verge of sweet.”
“He is still a dick. This one text proves nothing.”
“I should meet him to verify,” Eliot tells me. “Invite him.”
“Now you sound like Audrey.” I type on my phone.
“Our intelligent little sister. She makes valid points.”
“Like what? Wanting to skinny dip in a freezing cold ocean in Italy and getting her clothes stolen?”
“And we wouldn’t have done the same?”
He’s not wrong. Eliot and I have skinny dipped plenty of times, but I’d like to believe we’re aware of our surroundings and wouldn’t fall for a prank. I finish typing and hit send.
TOM CARRAWAY
I want to work on this song. I’m fine. Please. You can even come to my place.
I wait anxiously for a reply, but it doesn’t take long.
PHOENIX WOLFGANG
Be there soon.