Chapter Sixteen #2
Dax begins to follow my gaze, and my hand shoots out of its own accord, clamping down on his biceps.
“Thank you so much!” I say, my voice far too loud.
Once I’m sure the guys are done, I spin Dax around and begin shuffling him toward the door.
“I’ll listen to this later—once these goons are gone, and, uh, yeah.
I’ll text you.” I paste a smile on my face, and Dax smiles in bewilderment, gaze bouncing to everyone in the room in turn.
“Good to see you all,” he calls bemusedly, one hand on the doorknob.
When he doesn’t turn it, I place my hand atop his and squeeze, twisting the knob. “So good,” I confirm. “Bye!”
He allows me to hurry him over the threshold as my friends shout their goodbyes and well wishes for Final’s set at the Halloween show tomorrow night.
Before I can close the door, he turns, bracing his arm on the doorframe.
My body flushes as his gaze roams hungrily over me.
I’ve never felt sexier in sweatpants in my entire life.
“See you tomorrow night?” he says quietly, just for me.
“Don’t forget,” I murmur. “We’re supposed to hate each other.”
“I remember,” he promises. “We’re not friends and we’re definitely”—he leans in, his lips coasting over my cheekbone, pressing a kiss to the space between my jaw and my ear—“not kissing.”
I move my head in an approximation of a nod, my tongue too tied up in lust to form coherent speech, the memory of all our not-kissing heating my skin. I shoo him out of the doorway. A moment longer and I’ll be melting into a puddle at his feet.
He smirks, pushing off the frame, his gaze raking over me one last time before heading for the stairwell. I can hear him laughing even after I close the door.
“I hate every single one of you,” I tell my friends, tossing the CD onto my mail pile by the door.
“Love you, too,” they call in unison.
Miracle of all miracles, I make it through the rest of the night without my friends eternally mortifying me—their favorite pastime.
I’m both drained and refilled by the time I crawl into bed with Brooklyn. Tyler ended up passing out on the couch with Charlie, though how either of them is sleeping with the other’s feet in their face, I have no idea. I’m more familiar with what those feet smell like than I care to be.
In true rhythm-section fashion, Reid’s stoned-oblivion snoring keeps perfect time from his sleeping bag on the floor. Also on brand is Drew’s occasional upstaging by talking nonsense in his sleep.
Brooklyn hums Céline Dion’s “It’s All Coming Back to Me Now” under her breath as we settle into bed, the song still ringing in my ears from our impromptu—but no less overeager—postdinner power-ballads-of-the-’90s sing-along session.
I wiggle until comfortable, which, for me, is no fewer than three flops from side to side.
“Comfy?” Brooklyn teases me.
“Quite.” My voice is more hoarse than usual from scream-singing diva classics off-key, this group the only group I’ll ever sing in front of. Thankfully, Charlie is as tone-deaf as I am, but at least he has a drummer’s rhythm. I couldn’t carry a tune in a bucket with a lid on it.
“What did Dax bring you?”
“Unreleased album—the one before the one they’re recording now.” I press a finger over my lips. They could sue me for telling her this, but I decide best-friend privilege supersedes my NDA, and I know I can trust her to keep quiet until after the article comes out.
Her eyes widen, and she whips the blanket over our heads, cocooning us. “What?”
I catch her up, her eyes saucers by the end. “Holy fuck,” she murmurs. “No wonder the article’s been impossible to write.”
I avert my gaze, her validation lifting a weight off my shoulders. “Yeah.” I sigh.
Her hand wraps around my wrist, halting my anxious toying with the stray thread on my pillow. “You’ll figure it out. You always do.”
I nod, my throat too clogged with emotion to speak. I’ve missed her so much.
“But you owe me five dollars,” she says saucily.
“What?” I laugh. “Why?”
“Because you and Dax might not be canoodling, but what y’all are doing is way more serious.”
It’s my eyes’ turn to bug out.
She wiggles her head side to side like no explanation should be necessary. “You’re totally dating, just without the sexy stuff. Though,” she adds pensively, “y’all staring at each other in the kitchen was so hot I felt like I should excuse myself.”
“Stop,” I say around a laugh, nudging her shin with my toe.
“So,” she says, plowing on unperturbed. “To answer my own question from last week: Yes, he still stares at you like he wants to devour you.”
I hide my face in my pillow, cheeks burning. Peeking one eye over at her, I mumble, “There may have been some canoodling.”
“Sloane Marie Donavan,” she whisper-screams, slapping the mattress between each word. “What?!”
“We accidentally took a nap together,” I say as quietly as I can, though the guys’ symphony of snores and deep breathing tell me they’re all zonked.
“Naturally,” Brooklyn breathes, her voice laced with barely repressed glee.
“And when we woke up…” I can’t conceal the grin that stretches across my face, cheeks burning. “He told me he wanted to kiss me, but I told him I couldn’t kiss him or I wouldn’t be able to pretend like I hadn’t, and that I wouldn’t be able to stop if we started—”
Brooklyn lets out a closed-mouth squeal, kicking her feet under the covers. “S! You dirty dog.”
“And then he says, ‘So don’t kiss me’ and proceeds to, like, get his mouth on me. Kissing but not kissing?”
Brooklyn lets out a groan like she’s being tortured. “And?!”
I shrug. “Then nothing,” I say anticlimactically. “We can’t.”
She kicks her feet like a toddler having a tantrum. “You’re a stronger woman than me. I would’ve folded like a chair. You should let him fold you like a chair,” she declares decidedly. “And then give me the five dollars you owe me, you canoodling canoodler.”
I choke on my own tongue, and she cackles as if she can read my mind, how badly I do want it, want him, how he feels like the only thing I’ve gotten right in years.
And I can’t have him. Not yet, anyway. But my head and my heart and my other parts are at odds, my ever-in-control logical side floundering.
I don’t know how much longer I can hold out.
Brooklyn’s mouth twists off to the side, her laughter giving way to something more pensive.
“I know you don’t like being told what to do and will just do the opposite if I try, and I know it’s complicated right now with the article and everything, but…
please don’t get in your own way about this. I really like him for you.”
I emotionally steel myself, because I know she’s not done. When Brooklyn gets in her feels, she gets in them. It doesn’t help that she has help from the holy trinity right now: Jose, Mary Jane, and Céline Dion.
“When I first met you guys, I thought you’d be the one in the group I was the least close to. We were so different.” We both laugh softly. We still are so different. “But then, once you decided you liked me, this whole other side of you came out, and I realized you’re not a total wet blanket.”
I scoff in mock offense, kicking her shin lightly. “Just because I don’t like being the center of the attention—”
She plows on as if she didn’t hear me, the giggle in her voice giving away that she did.
“You’re funny, and mischievous, and really fucking clever.
And I thought, Holy shit.” Her teasing lilt gives way to something throat-cloggingly sincere.
“I’m so lucky to truly know you. You don’t show your true self to many people, and I—” She shakes her head.
“That summer, I thought the thing with Dax was done the first time you bolted after he kissed you. But he kept showing up, and I watched as you opened up in a way I’d only ever seen you do with me, or the guys, or your brothers, that secret side of you that only comes out in your writing.
And I was like, Oh. This is big. Something more than just a summer fling.
And maybe the timing wasn’t quite right, but I don’t think the two of you are done yet. ”
I nod, wrapping my hand around Brooklyn’s and squeezing it in thanks in lieu of a response.
My throat is too tight to form words, but if I could, I’d say, I don’t think we’re done yet either.
And if I were feeling especially brave and honest, It all feels a little too good, too easy to be true, and I don’t trust it.
[Excerpt from Sloane Donavan’s Final Revelations interview transcript]
2001: No One Has Time for Your Fucking Feelings
MARCUS: For the record… I don’t hate Dax. I love him, but I’m not in love with him, despite what every epic slow-burn, enemies-to-lovers fan fiction about us might suggest. We weren’t enemies, but I was definitely a dick to Dax in the beginning.
DAX: Was he? I… don’t remember most of 2001, to be honest with you.
CAIN: Marcus is good at what he does because he’s worked really fucking hard at it. Dax is good without really even trying. He’s one of those rare talents that you’re lucky to have but also you kinda hate him a bit, even though it’s not his fault.
JONAH: Fuck, 2001. I was sober and barely remember it, it was such a whirlwind.
BARRETT: Jonah’s California sober, okay? Don’t let him act like he rawdogged 2001. None of us did. We’d been touring almost nonstop trying to break out, and now that we had, what’re ya gonna do? Stop? No! We were exhausted, but we kept going—most of us with some vices in tow.
CAIN: The year that made us was also the year that almost broke us.
MARCUS: Our second album, Covenant, went gold. We were on our first headlining tour. Everything seemed to be coming up Final, and then—
JONAH: I was in school to be an accountant before Final blew up. I’d had suspicions that [our label] Dropkick was being shady. Our royalty checks were always late and super small. It didn’t make sense… We were one of the biggest bands on the scene and completely broke.
DAX: The way we performed the songs off Sacrament—the record Final put out before I joined—was completely different from the album, and our fans had been asking us to record the new version.
We were one album into a three-album deal with Dropkick—who were screwing us.
So, to get us out of our deal one album cycle faster, I suggested rerecording it.
BARRETT: And Marcus took that personally.
CAIN: In Marcus’s defense, that album was his baby, and the idea of rerecording the album with Dax as lead vocalist when Dax didn’t seem to be taking the band seriously and Marcus took everything seriously… There was tension, yeah.
BARRETT: There was a lot of ego around that time.
It gets to your head a little bit, when you blow up that fast. It made us a little blind to what was going on with Dax.
We just thought he was being a dumb kid, out in the world for the first time, partying and experimenting.
Maybe a bit too much, but he seemed pretty together compared to some of the other bands we toured with, so we didn’t realize how bad it was until it was really bad.
JONAH: I don’t know that it was just ego. There was legitimately a lot of shit going on, and no one really gives you a road map for it, so you’re just kinda hanging on for dear life and hoping you don’t get thrown off the ride.
DAX: I don’t really remember a time I wasn’t depressed.
I was fronting this band that I’d basically fallen into, and I developed huge imposter syndrome, telling myself I didn’t actually deserve any of the success Final was reaping.
My depression and imposter syndrome fed into each other in a way that made me really self-destructive.
I got on antidepressants at one point, but not the right ones—like, every bad side effect they warn you about?
I had. And so I started taking more stuff—some prescribed, some not—trying to combat all that.
I was medicated six ways from Sunday. When you’re a part of something that big—something so much bigger than just you—there’s no time for you to have a breakdown.
People are counting on you to “be okay,” so I was.
I wasn’t actually, but I figured out a system that allowed me to fake it.
MARCUS: On the outside, we were having the best year of our life. On the inside…
JONAH: A lot of songs in the hardcore scene are about depression—ours are no exception.
And yet, everyone seems surprised when they find out their favorite band members are fucking depressed.
Like, “You should’ve said something.” They fucking are.
They’re screaming it on stage every night.
But when you’re one of the biggest bands on the scene, no one wants to hear you complain about how beyond burned-out you are—
CAIN: Or how you miss your girlfriend back home and you’re terrified you’re gonna lose the best thing that’s ever happened to you because you’re gone all the fucking time—
BARRETT: Or that you’re messed up over your dad dying and had to be back on tour two days after the funeral—
JONAH: We all just put on a brave face because no one wants to hear that the guys who seemingly have it all aren’t happy. No one has time for your fucking feelings.