Chapter 6 #2
It’s not the aggressive, thrashing punk that had filled the room a few minutes ago. It’s slower, stripped down, an acoustic-style melody on the electric, clean and deliberate, with each note ringing clear. It’s something I worked on alone, in my quieter moments.
In my sadder moments.
And then I start to sing.
The lyrics pour out, raw and unfiltered, about being the pin-up, the fantasy, the plaything. About being the girl on the poster, the one they scream for but never actually see. About being a product, not a person, discarded as soon as the fantasy becomes reality or they’re done with me.
“You want the leather and the sneer,
The illusion I construct,
But you don’t want what’s beneath—
You just want me to shut the fuck up.”
My voice cracks on the last line, the rasp in my throat turning it into something uglier and more honest. But I don’t stop. I keep playing, keep singing, pouring every ounce of my fury and humiliation and exhaustion into this quiet, brutal confession.
Joel has stopped packing. Milo’s sitting cross-legged beside his ruined kit, his eyes on me. Frank, behind the bar, has paused his furious wiping down of spilled drinks to glare in my direction. And everyone else in the crowd has gone quiet, watching and listening.
I finish the song on a single, sustained note that hangs in the air like smoke. Then I let it fade, the feedback dying into silence, and unplug the guitar, my hands steadier now. It’s not much, but it’s calmed me down enough to walk across the sticky floor to the bar.
Frank is behind the bar, wiping down the bar top with a rag. His movements are sharp and angry, the kind of furious efficiency that comes from a man who’s just had his night ruined and is looking for someone to blame. And I know, with sick certainty, that the someone is going to be me.
I approach the bar, my jaw set, my spine straight. I won’t slouch. I won’t apologize. “Frank,” I say, my voice quiet but firm. “I need to get paid.”
“Do you?” he says, but he doesn’t look at me. “Because I’ve got damage that needs to be paid for, as well.”
“He grabbed me,” I say, louder now. “That guy came onto the stage and grabbed me, so I defended myself.”
Frank stops wiping. He slaps the damp rag on the counter with a wet smack that echoes like a judge’s gavel. Then, finally, he looks at me, and I’m immediately taken aback, because his eyes are as cold and hard as ice. I mean, he’s never been the warmest guy, but this?
“I don’t care one bit, Cass, because your shows are a goddamn magnet for this shit,” he says. “I’ve got cops in my parking lot. I’ve got a guy out there icing his shoulder and threatening to sue me. Sue me. Not you. Me. Do you fucking understand that?”
“Frank, I—”
He cuts me off. “Here’s the deal: you get one more chance, and if there’s another fuckup, Pinebox is done here.”
What does that even mean?
Put up a velvet rope?
Screen every drunk asshole at the door for violent tendencies?
The idea that the band can control the crowd is ludicrous, another problem I have to solve that the guys who play here never seem to face. I’ve seen male-fronted bands incite full-scale riots and get invited back the next week, but I defend myself once, and I’m the liability.
But the economic reality bites harder than the indignation.
If I lose this gig, we can’t afford to practice. If we can’t practice, the band falls apart. If the band falls apart, then what the hell am I even doing here? What was the point of clawing my way out of Camden if it all collapses because some asshole can’t hold his liquor?
But Frank doesn’t give a shit about any of that, or about us or me beyond the fact that we bring in a crowd who buy drinks. He just turns away, grabbing a glass to polish as if the conversation is already over, making it clear I’m dismissed.
Yet again, to another guy, I’m a problem and not enough.
My throat is tight, my eyes burning with tears I absolutely refuse to shed. Because crying would be admitting he hurt me as much as the guy who grabbed me, proving that I’m exactly what he thinks I am—a liability wrapped in fishnets who can’t handle the job.
So I just turn and walk back to the stage.
Joel and Milo are packing up in silence. Joel’s jaw is tight, his face a mask of barely suppressed frustration. Milo is methodically breaking down what’s left of his kit, but I know he’s running the numbers in his head, calculating the exact degree to which we’re screwed.
Neither of them looks at me.
I kneel next to my amp, my hands moving on autopilot as I start to disconnect the cables. My mind is a swirling mess of rage and humiliation and fear. Frank wants me to manage the crowd, to tame the chaos, when the chaos is the entire point.
The chaos is what makes a punk show a punk show. It’s the raw, unpolished energy that separates us from the sanitized, corporate bullshit that plays at the bigger venues. But Frank doesn’t care about that. He just cares about liability, lawsuits, and the bottom line.
And, despite all that, I don’t want to go anywhere.
We need this gig for the money, sure, but it’s also the only time every week where I feel like I belong somewhere, away from the classes I’m barely passing and the legion of people lined up to tell me I’m a fraud or not enough or that I need to do things better or differently.
I sit back on my heels, staring at the scarred wood of the stage floor. “There has to be a solution…” I whisper to myself.
And right then, an image surfaces in my mind, uninvited and bizarre. It’s a giant, terrified boy with kind green eyes and asshole friends, making a clumsy, chaotic mess of things in the middle of the mosh pit, in his fumbling, spectacular attempt to help.
Ben Kellerman.
The guy who hadn’t grabbed or groped.
The guy who’d dealt with the assholes and then fled from me.
The guy I’d been stupidly, inexplicably looking for in the crowd tonight.
I picture his six-foot-four of nervous golden retriever energy, positioned between me and the next drunk asshole. The mental image is… something. Him, probably apologizing to the guy while accidentally body-checking him into next week.
But I can’t forget the sheer size of him, the way the crowd had parted around him when he’d barreled through the mosh pit, not because he was throwing punches, but because he was simply there, an immense object that couldn’t be ignored.
And I remember the way he’d looked at me on stage.
Not with entitlement.
With something else.
Some lust, sure.
But also… respect?
Care?
Heat floods between my thighs at the thought of him, even as I immediately try to disregard the idea as stupid or tell myself he wouldn’t agree to it anyway. But the thought lingers, my mind prodding me to take the shot, knowing it might be the best option.
He might be the best option.
The thought takes shape, solidifying into something almost like a plan. What’s the worst that could happen? He says no, and I’m back where I started. He says yes, and I’ve got a human scarecrow who might actually keep the worst of the assholes at bay.
It’s desperate. It’s unlikely. It’s probably stupid.
But it might be the only option I have left.