Chapter Nine
Iris
I eat, conscious that I’m starving again, but I barely taste a bite.
Max’s efforts are wasted on me. I’m so nervous of what the other two members of Lucidity will say about me hooking up with Max that I don’t even have the nerve to ask them if they’re willing to be the subjects of my efforts to impress Ric.
Afterwards, while Wynter and Reid clear the table and load the dishwasher, Max coaxes me onto the couch. “You need to stop beating yourself up. You haven’t done anything wrong, Iris. We haven’t done anything wrong.”
It’s clear that he believes that, but it’s much harder to convince myself, especially when part of me would love to believe I can have them all.
Yes, even frosty, Wynter. He’s thawing, and I keep getting glimpses of what’s beneath, and it’s obviously a whole lot of heart.
Otherwise, the other two wouldn’t love and respect him as much as they clearly do.
Reid hurdles the back of the sofa when he returns, and lands in the spot to the left of me. The same spot he occupied during the film last night. Max remains on my right, his arm slung protectively around my shoulder.
“Can’t believe you put me on hold, but let this guy take you all the way to a big O.”
“Reid!” Max grumbles.
“What?”
“She feels bad about it, so stop making your mouth go and making it worse.”
“Ariel?” He nuzzles his head against my shoulder. “You know I’m only teasing, right? Any right-minded woman would choose to do Max. Of course, they’d also choose to do me.”
“Maybe she doesn’t want to have sex with you.” Wynter’s returned. There’s no space for him on the couch, so he rests against the side of the armchair by the fireplace.
“She totally wants to have sex with me,” Reid retorts. “Don’tcha, Ariel?”
I wish that the sofa would develop sentience and devour me.
Wynter rolls his eyes and releases a groan. “Seriously?”
“What?” asks Max.
“She fucking wants to, that’s what.”
“Duh!” Max responds to Wynter. “Obviously. She’s hot for you, too. How did you miss this?”
Wynter’s brows crook sceptically. He squints at me. “That true, Iris?”
“I’m game.” Reid inches closer, so that our thighs brush.
His present invasion of my space gives me an opportunity to avoid answering Wynter’s direct question. Wanting something and confessing it out loud are two entirely different things.
“How dirty do you want to get, sea siren? Threeway? Fourway? DP? DVP?”
I keep my mouth firmly closed.
“No need to be shy about it.”
“Do you think I can pay a plastic surgeon to sew his mouth shut?” Wynt asks Max.
Max, reassuringly, still has his arm around my shoulders.
“I’m sure you can find a dodgy enough hack somewhere who’ll do it for the dough, but don’t because then I’ll have to do backing vocals.”
Wynter shrugs. “That ain’t gonna be an issue in a few. Six days and we’re defunct, guys. Give it twelve months and no one will even remember we existed.”
“That’s not true.” Apparently, I’ve found my tongue faced with the prospect of my favourite band dissolving. “Have a little more faith in your fans, please. We’re out there. We’re waiting and we’re excited. We’re not going anywhere, and there’s no reason for you to either.”
“Oh, you do have a voice.”
I nod. “Can’t you get outside help?”
“For his lyric-i-tis?” Reid asks.
“Plenty bands use songwriters, right?” I look to the three of them for confirmation. I have no insider knowledge of the music industry, but I know there are plenty of artists who don’t write their material.
Wynter draws his lips into a rueful pucker. “Been there, tried that.”
The response is more tempered and less knee jerk than I anticipate.
He sighs, then crosses his ankles and sinks into a cross-legged sitting position, back to the side of the armchair.
“Either they don’t get our sound, or they deliberately set out to distort it and turn it into something so trite and cringey, it makes our tackles shrivel. ”
“So, what happens in six days?”
Wynter rakes his hands through his blond hair in frustration. “It’s how long we have to deliver something before the label pulls the plug and drop us.”
“Or worse,” Max adds in a low grumble. “Decides to release the subpar atrocity the hack they hired produced.”
“Is it really that bad?”
“Worse,” Reid sighs. “It’s the pits.”
“That man was a fucking butcher. I don’t care if he’s an industry darling, what he did to our sound was a crock of shit.” Clearly agitated, Max withdraws his arm from around my shoulder, a space Reid immediately fills.
As my gaze ping-pongs between them, it’s obvious there’s a consensus of agreement and inevitability about their demise.
They’ve helped me. Maybe it’s time I helped them. “What can I do?”
“Not a damn thing, Iris.” The way Wynter says it puts a crack right through my heart. We might not see eye to eye, but he’s tragic in this moment, and I want nothing more than to offer him comfort in any way that I can.
Reid shakes his head.
But Max peers at me hopefully. “You don’t happen to be a songwriting genius or an award-winning poet, do you?”
“’fraid not. I did once win a slam poetry contest in primary school, but I’m thinking that doesn’t count.”
“Snap,” he claims. “Mine was about my pet dog, what was yours about?”
“Flesh-eating zombies.”
“Producer friend?” Reid asks, nibbling on a chipped, black-painted fingernail. I let him down with a rueful head shake. His shoulders sag only for him to plaster on a grin, and say, “So, shag, then, Iris? While I’m still a hot commodity.”
“Stop it.” Wynter chucks a cushion at him, which hits him in the face. “She doesn’t want to shag you.”
Not actually true, but I’m not about to risk turning the conversation back in that direction.
There’s still a knot of tension in my stomach, and butterflies in my brain keen on reminding me that shagging three friends is not reasonable behaviour.
At best, it makes me a groupie, at worst, something far less pleasant.
“We should try to work something out,” Max says.
“Yeah.” Wynter droops from the shoulders. It’s like he’s determinedly folding himself up small, so the universe doesn’t notice him, and the bad things romp off to elsewhere and juicier pickings.
Reid tears at his hair, leaving the curling strands standing on end. “Guys? Please. We really gonna spend another night staring at the studio walls? ’Cause I have to say, I’d rather spend it shagging Iris. I feel that’d be more productive, and possibly inspirational. Definitely aspirational.”
Wynter raises his head to shake it at the fool. “Iris, who has yet to even hint at the possibility that she wants to shag you? Might want to consult her on that before making any plans.”
Reid nudges my cheek with his nose. “You want to, don’t you, hun? Besides, aren’t those the unwritten rules? If you shag one of us, you have to shag us all.”
“They’re not unwritten rules, they’re your imagination getting the better of you.”
“At least mine’s working.”
That was low. I wince on Wynter’s behalf.
Wynter’s mouth has tightened into a lemon pucker. Max, the eternal mediator, pushes onto his feet, and sticks a hand out to help Wynter rise. “Let’s just go jam for a while, guys. Iris, come with. Maybe having an audience will inspire us.”
I’m not about to say no to a private Lucidity show. Max gives me a hand onto my feet too.
“Am I okay to take some pictures? Ric loaned me a camera.”
“Sure, just don’t get in the way,” Wynter replies.
Reid mutters under his breath about how much nicer the evening could be.
Meanwhile, I jog up the stairs to fetch the camera.
When I come back down, Reid and Wynter have already left, but Max is waiting for me.
“Don’t let Reid pressure you, even if you want it.
And don’t take this as me trying to stop you.
I’m just saying, do things on your terms, not his. ”
Wise words, and certainly ones I’m going to endeavour to live by. Although, I’m still having trouble wrapping my head around the idea that it’s okay to have all three flavours of ice-cream at once, and not having to choose from strawberry, vanilla, or chocolate.
“Do you really not have anything?” I ask as we cross the plaza. They must have something, if they’ve spent time with a producer.
“Some,” he squeezes my hand. “Actually, plenty, but Wynt’s lost faith in it after what happened with…
” He shakes his head. “He’s started believing he’s as shit as that bastard made our stuff sound.
He did a real hatchet job on him, made him doubt his ability, which sucks, because the demo versions we did were ace. Raw, certainly, but ace.”
“Wanker,” I say, which provokes a smile. “So, you’re saying you all had faith in them before this producer guy soured shit?”
“I still do now. So does Reid. They’re great songs, it’s just the production that imbecile put on them that fucked them up. Oh, and his insistence on tampering with the lyrics. He didn’t understand nuance.”
“So, if you went back to how you envisaged them originally…?”
“Convince Wynter, not me. I’m already there.”
We reach the studio, and he pauses to hold the door open for me. “What if you played them for me? I could be your test audience.”
He scratches his chin as he ushers me forward into the open plan space. “Maybe.”
I’m not sure what I was expecting a recording studio to look like.
The room we enter is not dissimilar to the one we just left, only minus the fireplace.
There’s a duo of couches, and a large meeting style table with chairs.
A tiny kitchenette sits off to one side, and a couple of doors lead off to uncharted areas.
The walls of what is clearly a converted barn house a score of risqué Alaric Liddell originals of bands current and past. Some of them put fire into my cheeks.
It makes the camera I’m holding into a grenade again.
What the hell am I supposed to shoot that’s going to impress Ric Liddell?