Chapter 23
Juliet
I hadn’t seen my former bandmate Nicole in over a decade. The last time I saw her, we had gone out to see some live music in an attempt to rekindle the friendship we had before The Muffins broke up. But we hadn’t had much to talk about, and I knew as soon as I saw her inky black pupils that she was high.
We’d kept sporadically in touch since then. Nicole had gone through rehab and had moved back in with her parents in Seattle as part of her commitment to staying clean. I remembered Finn’s suggestion that maybe I should talk to my old bandmates, so I had messaged Nicole, told her I’d be in Seattle, and invited her to the show.
To my surprise, she had replied right away. She politely turned down my invitation to the show, probably because she thought it meant I wanted to party. But she agreed to meet me in Pike Place Market for a coffee before I had to go to sound check.
I wasn’t sure what to expect. The Muffins had fought a lot when we broke up, but that was so long ago. We had been kids, not sure what we were doing or where we wanted to go, two of us already sinking into addiction. I had been an angry girl who had sacrificed her relationships with her mother and her sister for a band that wasn’t ever going to make it and was about to stop existing altogether. To say I was in a bad headspace was an understatement.
I had thought, for a long time, that I resented my former bandmates, or that I no longer cared about them at all. But spending a weekend with Vicki and her friends had made me miss them. I didn’t want the long, crazy conversations or even the fun we’d had onstage, and I definitely didn’t want to relive the epic fights. I wanted to talk to someone who knew me like only a bandmate could know me—that unfathomable space of friendship, business relationship, and co-conspirator that only bandmates live in.
Nicole was wearing a flowered skirt over leggings and boots. A black sweater swathed her upper half, contrasting with her flawlessly pale skin. She had grown out her hair dye, and her natural brown hair was tied up with a scrunchie. She surprised me by hugging me hard, and when she pulled away, there were tears in her eyes.
“You look so good,” she said, swiping her thumbs under her eyelashes.
“So do you,” I replied, and we both knew that we weren’t just talking about looks.
“This is the best,” Nicole said. “I can’t believe you messaged me. Let’s go get a coffee.” She led me to the nearest coffee stand by taking my hand.
I squeezed her hand, and any feeling of awkwardness vanished with that one little gesture. I had jammed with this woman and dreamed with her and made plans to rule the world with her. I had held her hair while she threw up. I had cried in front of her. I had had screaming fights with her, and we’d let each other down. Some bandmates are just coworkers, but others are blood.
She talked as we ordered coffee. Living with her parents, she said, wasn’t as bad as she’d thought it would be. Her father was a bankruptcy lawyer—one of those guys you see on billboards—and he had her working part time at his office, filing and answering the phone. She wasn’t seeing anyone, but she was thinking about dating. She was going to regular group sessions. She was healthy.
“You’re fucking amazing,” I told her, meaning it. The stupid stuff I dealt with in my life was petty by comparison. Anyone who had the guts to fight addiction had accomplished more than me.
“No, you are,” Nicole said as we walked with our drinks. “Playing with the Road Kings at the Paramount? You did it. Other people just talk about it. The rest of us in the band just talked about it. But you? You made a career in music. You actually did it.”
The words gave me a strange, stiff feeling. I had always assumed I wanted musical success—to hit it big, though it would have to be on my own terms. Doing what I wanted and making a lot of money at it. But I hadn’t thought about it that way in a long time. Musical success was a poisonous snake, and there was no way to hold it without getting bitten. Finn had taught me that.
I had spent years hiding, and I wasn’t doing that anymore. But was I chasing success? That didn’t seem right, either.
“It’s a good gig,” I said to Nicole. “I can pay my rent. I like the music.”
“They’re decent guys?”
“Yeah, they are.”
“What about your own stuff? Are you writing anything?”
I shook my head. I still had the notebook I’d bought, unused. “I haven’t written in a long time. Songwriting was never my talent.”
“I thought you were pretty good.”
I smiled at her. “I was just mad. That isn’t the same thing.”
She gave me a knowing look. “And you’re not mad anymore?”
“Oh, I’m mad. But being mad looks different in your thirties.”
“Wisdom,” she said, and we both laughed.
I realized we had wandered outside. I hadn’t been paying attention to where we were going.
“I don’t know,” Nicole said. “You seem like a rock star to me.”
“You wouldn’t recognize me,” I told her. “I’m the maid of honor at my sister’s wedding. I had to go to a dress fitting.”
That made her laugh so hard she stopped walking. She had to hold her cup steady so she wouldn’t spill it.
“Everyone finds that funny for some reason,” I said, deadpan.
Nicole straightened and took a breath. “Wait. Is your sister marrying that guy she was dating back then? Finn Wiley’s brother?”
I hid the pulse of happiness that warmed me at the mention of Finn. At least I hadn’t been the one to bring him up, which would have been pathetic of me. “Yes, him. They have two kids now. And Finn is the best man at the wedding.”
“Fuck yes,” Nicole said. “Tell me he’s hot and single.”
“He’s both.”
“I knew it!” She pointed at me, then motioned up and down, from my feet to my head. “Jules, you slut. You’re doing Finn Wiley. You have to be. I knew you had an orgasm glow.”
“How can you tell that?” I gasped. “You haven’t seen me in years!”
“Oh, please. I know what you look like when you’re getting laid. But even then, you never looked like this.” She scrutinized me again. “Nope, this is different than your usual sluttiness.”
“This is my usual sluttiness,” I argued, and a man walking by did a double take.
“Definitely not.” Nicole was confident. “This is better. You’re working sex magic on him. I’ll bet my life savings he has heart eyes right now.”
My pulse pounded. I hadn’t seen Finn since our weekend. I hadn’t offered to visit him. I hadn’t invited him to the shows. It had felt too terrifying to do those things, too raw. I wasn’t a relationship girl. I needed breathing room.
But I missed him every fucking day. I texted him like a groupie, and I couldn’t even find it in myself to be ashamed. I was this close to begging him for a naked picture to keep me going, even though I could get in my car and go see the real thing. He was coming to the show tonight, which I couldn’t think about or I’d get distracted.
The sex magic was all Finn, not me.
Nicole didn’t think the idea of me being with Finn was outrageous, or impossible, or something to hide. She assumed that the only rational thing for me to do was get Finn into bed posthaste, which I basically had. She also assumed he would say yes.
“Nicole, we used to be in a punk band,” I said. “You did not just reference an emoji in this conversation.”
“Oh, shit,” she said, and then we were laughing again. When we caught our breath, she said, “Okay, no more boy talk. Tell me more about this wedding. I need to know.”
“It’s the worst,” I complained. “Vicki thinks I’m going to fail, but she still wants me to be the maid of honor for some reason. The whole thing has blown up bigger than it was supposed to be, and I have no money. I can’t just flake, because Vicki will never speak to me again and Mom will be mad. I’m supposed to organize the bachelorette party, and it has to be respectable, because Mom is coming, and she invited her boss.” I grabbed her arm. “Wait. Have you ever organized a bachelorette party? Help me.”
“Jules, I’ve never even been to a bachelorette party. No one in their right mind invites me to those things.”
I sighed and dropped my hand.
A thoughtful look crossed her face. “Wait, though. I think…I might have an idea.”
“No strippers,” I said. “No dive bars. I need something that’s decent but doesn’t cost any money.”
My bandmate thought it through, and then she smiled.
“Don’t worry, Jules,” she told me. “I’ve got it. It’s in the bag.”
Sweat trickled down my neck, my temples. Princess’s strap was stuck to my back through my shirt. The air was thick with sweat and the smell of bodies pressed together. My temples pounded. Past the earpiece in my ear, I could hear the crowd.
In front of me, facing the crowd, Denver lifted his arms, and the lights silhouetted him against the darkness. His shirt was soaked. We were forty-five minutes into our set, and he was flying high. He had the entire place in the palm of his hand.
I glanced down at the setlist taped to the amp in front of me, then locked gazes with Stone, a few feet away. He nodded. We were going into “Starshine” next, then “Fuck You, California.” The music wasn’t even in my head at this point—it was in my body, my fingers, my blood. I was in the zone. All I needed to do was play.
Denver addressed the crowd. “We have a new bass player,” he said, and cheers rose up. “We begged her to play with us, and she finally said yes. Everyone, this is Juliet Barstow.”
He gestured to me, the lighting guy put a spotlight on me, and the room lit up with cheers. I leaned over to speak into my microphone. “Hey, Seattle,” I said.
Denver gave me one of his asshole grins, then turned back to the crowd. “Neal is chilling out for a bit,” he said, “but I’m getting itchy feet. I don’t know. I’m thinking about a little trip down the coast in our bus. Maybe further. It’s been a while.”
The roar was rising so loud it got harder to hear him. Or maybe that was the roar in my head.
“What do you think, Stone?” Denver asked.
“I’m in,” Stone said into his mic, and that was when I knew for sure that they had talked about it. Those assholes had already talked about a tour and agreed amongst themselves. Without me.
What did I expect? It was in the name of the fucking band, the Road Kings. They had built their reputation by touring live. They had done it nonstop for over a decade, their entire twenties. The albums were great and the rehearsals were fun, but live shows were what the Road Kings did. They whipped up a sweaty crowd, gave them a good time, and sent them home. Like tonight.
“Well, Juliet?” Denver looked at me again, grinning. Of course they had planned it. And he was asking me onstage, in front of everyone. I really should dick punch him one of these days. All of them.
“Want to take a vacation?” Denver asked when I paused too long.
“I want to play the rest of this show,” I shot back into my mic. “But, fine. If you’re taking a ride in that bus, I guess I’ll go.”
“I knew you would,” he said over the crowd. Then Stone played the intro to “Starshine,” and we weren’t talking anymore.