Chapter 19
A week later the fighting started again.
“God, you’re such a pretentious asshole!” JJ shouted, the hotel door slamming open and bouncing against the wall. I knew from the tone of his voice that, for once, he wasn’t joking around.
This morning, the band had some type of meeting with their label to discuss the new record that would go into production as soon as their tour was over. While they were gone, I hung out at the hotel and worked on my post that was due later today.
“Me?” Oliver shouted back. “I’m not the one who kept mouthing off the whole damn time. Were you trying to piss him off?”
Alec was the first to appear in the living room. I jumped to my feet when I saw him, but he didn’t stop to tell me what was going on. He swept by silently and disappeared down the hall without a word.
“Oh, I’m sorry,” JJ said, clearly anything but. “I didn’t realize asking for a little creative freedom was considered mouthing off. Next time I’ll consult you before thinking or breathing.”
“Dude, why are you mad at me?” Oliver demanded.
“Because! I want to do something different for our next album.”
I had a strong feeling that neither Oliver or JJ wanted me to hear their fight, so I decided to hide in the suite’s office before they saw me. I scooped up my laptop and dashed across the living room, but when I reached the edge of the room, I realized that their voices weren’t getting any closer.
“What’s wrong with what we have?”
“It’s not us, Oliver,” JJ said as the two continued to fight in the front hall.
“Of course it is,” he shot back. “I wrote it.”
“No, it’s not. You only wrote what they wanted to hear. I’m sick of the sucking up and the sugary music and the stupid clothes. I want things to be like they used to when we had fun and you wrote killer songs.”
I held my breath and tried to ignore the slow burning feeling of guilt in my stomach; I knew I shouldn’t have been standing here, eavesdropping on an exchange that was probably private, but I was tired of not knowing and I couldn’t make myself move.
Whenever there was some kind of tension with the band, I always felt like I was catching the tail end of the conversation.
Not because I was literally only hearing half of what was said, but because the Heartbreakers seemed to have all these little secrets that everyone knew, but weren’t willing to talk about.
“I’m not sucking up!” Oliver shot back.
“Yeah?” JJ said. “Prove it. Let’s play one of our old Infinity and Beyond songs tomorrow night.”
Oliver’s voice dropped, and I almost didn’t hear his response. “You know we can’t do that.”
“Why not? Because they don’t want us to? Don’t you get it, Oliver? We made it. We don’t have to take their shit anymore.”
“The set list is already set and—”
“Screw the set list! Screw them!” JJ shouted. “And you know what? Screw you too!”
The door opened and slammed again. It was quiet for a moment and then, before I realized that the fight was over, Oliver stepped into the living room. When he saw me, he scowled.
“Were you listening to that?”
“I’m sorry,” I said quickly, my cheeks warm. “I wasn’t trying to, but you guys were shouting and it was kinda hard not to hear.”
“God dammit!” Oliver swore and kicked the armchair in front of him. Then he dropped down in the seat and buried his face in his hands. After three painfully long seconds he said, “Sorry for yelling, Stella. You didn’t do anything wrong.”
As I looked at him I was hit with another wave of guilt, but I pushed the feeling away. “Do you want to talk about it?” I asked tentatively, and he was quiet for so long that I thought maybe he hadn’t heard my question.
“Thanks for the offer,” he finally said without looking at me. “Maybe tomorrow. Right now I kinda want to be alone.”
“Oh, okay,” I said after swallowing a few times. It hurt that he didn’t want my comfort, but he sounded so dejected that I couldn’t be mad and I left him in the living room to his thoughts.
At first, I didn’t know where I was going—maybe the office where I originally planned to slip off to or one of the many balconies where I could get some fresh air—and I wandered down the hall slowly, trying to process what just happened.
This most recent fight helped clear up some of the mystery surrounding the band’s breakup rumors, filling in details that I’d been oblivious to, but I wanted the full picture.
Xander hadn’t returned to the hotel with the rest of the band, and with JJ gone and Oliver not willing to talk, there was only one person I could ask.
I hesitated when I reached Alec’s door. He was a hard person to gauge, and I didn’t know if he’d even be willing to talk to me.
I twisted my nose stud around a few times before taking a deep breath and knocking on the door.
There was no answer, but the light was on and I could hear someone moving around inside.
“Alec?” I called, knocking again. I bet he had his headphones in and couldn’t even hear me.
After a moment of silent debate, I twisted the doorknob and poked my head in.
Sure enough, Alec was pacing the room, buds in his ears.
“Sorry,” I said, when he turned to me. “I knocked, but you didn’t answer. ”
“Hi, Stella,” he said, and I took that as an invitation to come in.
“What’s going on?” I asked, not beating around the bush. As the question left my lips, a million more came forward. “I mean, with the band. Why were JJ and Oliver so mad at each other? Is the label making you do something you don’t like?”
Alec turned toward the window and fixed his gaze on the city outside. “It’s kind of a long story.”
“I don’t have anywhere else to be,” I said, which wasn’t entirely true. My latest blog post was almost due, but I still had some time. I needed to hear what Alec was going to say.
“All right,” he said, breathing a long sigh; it wasn’t one of exasperation, but of weariness. He gestured toward the bed. “Do you want to sit?”
Nodding, I tucked a leg under my butt as I plopped down. Alec sat next to me, but instead of diving into the story like I thought he would, he pulled his headphones from his neck. Without a word, he handed them to me.
Curious, I stuffed one of the buds into my ear.
It was silent as Alec searched for something on his iPod, but then he clicked a button and a song started to play.
It was grungier than the music I usually listened to, but the feedback effect with the song’s slow tempo and gruff vocalist worked well together.
My eyes closed as I enjoyed the rest of the song.
There was something strange about it—I knew I’d never heard it before, and yet I had.
When the music faded out, I handed the headphones back to Alec. “It was good. Who is it?”
“Infinity and Beyond,” Alec said, watching me closely.
“Bull,” I said, but I knew he wasn’t lying. It was Oliver’s voice that I recognized. Without the backdrop of a sickly sweet melody, his voice opened up, the sound throatier and layered with edge.
“This is one of their old songs,” he said. “Before we were the Heartbreakers.”
“They were so good,” I said. What happened? I almost asked, but I didn’t want to insult Alec. I carefully worded what I asked next: “Why’d they change?”
Alec ignored my question and chose to respond with another. “Did anyone ever tell you how this all happened?” he asked, waving his hand around.
“You mean the band?” I responded. “Yeah, Oliver did. Isn’t your dad the CEO of Mongo Records?”
He nodded. “Yeah, and he didn’t want me to be a musician.” Oliver had told me that too, but I wasn’t going to interrupt Alec’s story. “And he definitely didn’t want to sign me.”
“Why not?”
“Ever heard of Jackson Williams before?” he asked, and I shook my head.
“Not surprised. He was a one-hit wonder. My dad took him on a few years after he started the record label. He helped Jackson produce his first single. It did really well, but then Jackson wanted to do his own thing, take his music in a completely different direction.”
“So what happened?”
“My dad let him because he’s family. Jackson is my cousin, his nephew. When the record flopped, my dad blamed himself.”
I frowned. “It was just one record, right? That happens to artists all the time.”
“Yeah, but this…” Alec said, shaking his head, “this one was bad. Like destroyed-his-career bad.”
I suddenly realized where he was going with this. “And he didn’t want that to happen to you.”
Alec nodded. “He wouldn’t even take a chance.
” His eyes flashed with a rage so fierce that I leaned away—not because I was scared, but because I’d never seen such raw emotion from him before—but Alec clenched his fists, reining in his anger, and it passed as quickly as it appeared.
“I was good, really good, and he wouldn’t even listen. ”
I pursed my lips as a growing annoyance for Alec’s father built inside of me. “What’d you do?”
“I wasn’t willing to let it go,” he said.
“I told myself there were other labels, different producers, more chances for me, but nothing seemed to work out. Nobody wanted to take on a kid whose own dad didn’t believe in him.
That’s when I found Oliver, JJ, and Xander.
It was totally by accident. I was just surfing YouTube, watching music videos and stuff, and then I came across this band.
They were sick, and I knew my dad would want them, so I emailed Oliver saying I could get them a meeting, but only if they let me join. ”
“You were right,” I said, and for the first time since Alec started his story, a smile spread across my face. “Your dad liked them.”
“He still hated the idea of my involvement, but eventually he agreed to sign them, me included. Of course, there was a catch—we had to agree to a whole list of conditions.”
I’d gathered as much from past conversations with Oliver and his fights with JJ, but I wanted to know all the details. “Like what?”