Chapter 2
Chapter Two
Keannen
THE FIRST REHEARSAL nearly ends in disaster.
I knew it would the second our manager came to us with this bullshit scheme about opening for The Ten Hours. I’ve been waiting for this clash for a while, after all. It’s not like I could miss the rise of my ex-boyfriend’s super popular band. I’ve had to watch him become a rockstar while I’ve remained a washout. Not that Tim realizes any of that. He was too busy moving on and becoming a famous drummer or whatever. No time to care about some fucked up, flunky loser he abandoned back in high school.
So yeah, I knew about Tim and his band long before Emmett told us we were touring with them. I’ve practiced this moment in my head over and over for years, but when I step into the chilly, empty warehouse we’re going to use for tour rehearsals, I simply smirk at him, letting every unkind thought I’ve had about him over the past eight years curl the corners of my mouth as he gapes at me.
Fuck this guy. He doesn’t deserve better than a smirk, not after how he left things. I swagger in, hands stuffed in my leather jacket, and sneer at him. Tim sits behind his drum kit. The moment our eyes lock, his hands stop moving, sticks frozen in mid-air.
“You’re here,” a woman moving way too fast says.
She’s tidy and crisp, so I know before she introduces herself that she’s the tour manager. She’s got a serious “spreadsheet” vibe.
“We’re going to work on some marks today,” the manager, Daphne, says. “It’s especially important because we need to make sure we can swap instruments and stuff as quickly as possible. A lull between sets is a death sentence, so we can’t have you doing anything that might interfere with The Ten Hours’ setup.”
I scoff. Daphne shoots me a look, but I don’t care. Of course we have to bend over backward for The Ten Hours. They’re the big shots. We’re just some chaff they scooped out of a dive bar in downtown Seattle to serve as an appetizer. They’ll probably cannibalize our small but growing fan base and leave us in the dust. I told Jacob this was a stupid idea, but he and the others couldn’t say no when Rainier Talent Management dangled a contract in front of their faces, so here we are.
Whatever. I’m going to make my own fun during this calamity. Fun that mostly means tormenting my ex-boyfriend until he feels every second of those eight years I spent wondering where the hell he was and why he left.
Daphne ushers me and the rest of Baptism Emperor inside. We’re a bigger band than The Ten Hours in numbers if not in record sales. We’ve got a second guitarist, Dan, and they don’t, but like them, the star of the show is our lead singer. That chick Erin definitely has crazy pipes and a cool look, but no one on this earth is a match for our Jacob. The guy oozes charisma. If we ever make it big like The Ten Hours, we’re going to need a security detail just for him.
Jacob struts right up to The Ten Hours, his hazel eyes shining as brightly as that perfect smile he can don on command. His brown hair falls to his shoulders in soft waves, and even from behind I know his trademark dimples are out in force as he greets people who really should be our rivals and not our friends.
The rest of the band introduces themselves as well, but I hang back, letting Tim squirm. I know he’s dreading this. His fear is so thick it sizzles in the air. I leave him in torment for as long as I can, introducing myself to his bandmates last.
Then, after eight long years, we’re face to face again.
He looks good, the shithead. He’s grown into himself. I’m still taller than him, but he’s filled out in ways I never quite managed. His brown eyes flicker nervously to meet mine, and all my bravado abandons me in a rush. It’s like getting punched in the gut and wheezing for breath. One moment I’m the smirking antagonist; the next, I want to curl up in a ball on the ground.
Guess that shit still hurts even after all this time.
I don’t allow myself so much as a flinch. In fact, I stand up straighter, letting my smirk twist into something uglier. Tim all but cowers before me, accentuating what would otherwise be only a couple inches of height difference. As much as I want to gloat, every time he dares to look into my eyes I see the freckles scattered across his cheeks again, freckles I spent hours of my life counting, mapping, kissing. He’s a man now, but those freckles hung on tenaciously through the years, like a dusting of starlight that refuses to fade away.
Fuck.
“You two, um, alright?” Jacob says.
“Oh, we’re great,” I say. “Aren’t we, old buddy?”
Tim gulps. His bandmates startle. So, he really didn’t tell them about me. That shouldn’t sting, but it sure as hell does. The bastard actually went ahead and erased me from his past. It must have been nice being able to move on so painlessly. I wouldn’t know.
“Wait, you know each other?” their singer, Erin, says.
“We sure do, don’t we, Timmy?” I say.
“We met,” he says .
Everyone waits, but he doesn’t elaborate. I could, but it’s way more fun to let him wonder how much I’m going to reveal.
I shrug. “It was a long time ago. Nice to see you again, man. Guess you’re doing pretty alright for yourself, huh?”
“I guess,” Tim says.
“Aw, c’mon. Don’t be modest. You’re a big rockstar now!”
I sling an arm around his shoulders. I mean to startle him, but the sudden proximity hits me harder than I expect. I keep thinking I’m immune to this, that I don’t remember how many freckles span his cheeks, don’t remember the smell of his hair, won’t care that he sucks in a sharp breath when I hold him.
I’m wrong.
I release him a bit too hastily and stride away, making a beeline for the stage.
“What the hell was that?” someone mutters behind me.
“No idea.”
“Tim?”
“It’s fine. It’s nothing. Don’t worry about it.”
Nothing. Yeah, of course. Of course I’m nothing to him. That’s been the problem all along, hasn’t it? Why would it have changed after all these years?
I plop myself down behind the drum kit he was just using and pick up his sticks, trying not to think about his hands holding these very same sticks mere minutes ago. I tap them together like I’m counting out the beats at the start of a song, then shout, “We doing this or not?”
Then I slam the sticks down, banging out eight years of resentment.
THE REHEARSAL DOES NOT go well. We get through it, sure, but everyone is off-balance after that awkward round of introductions, and I’m too pissed to care. I do absolutely nothing to make it better, antagonizing Tim at every turn. He takes it all, barely reacting except to hunch deeper into his shoulders. He doesn’t even say anything when I suggest I’m going to out-drum him during this tour. He accepts the declaration as fact.
An exhausting six hours later, my nerves are frayed to tatters. Everyone is eager to get out of the rehearsal space, but this is the first practice of many. We’ll be doing this for weeks to get ready for the tour. Thankfully, not all of it will happen in such close quarters. Partially, that’s because Baptism Emperor isn’t a big enough band for us to take all the extra time off from our day jobs. I’ll need to squeeze in shifts at the record store around all these practices, though scheduling is the least of my concerns at the moment.
Seeing Tim was a lot. A hell of a lot.
I wasn’t ready for it .
It hits me when I get home to an efficiency apartment crammed into a narrow tower of similar apartments in Seattle. The space is just one room, though I do at least have a loft to make it feel like my bedroom is somewhat separate from the kitchen and living room.
The moment the door shuts behind me, the silence hits me.
I don’t bother turning on the light. This place is small, and no one is here to smell me as I climb the ladder into the loft and go directly for my bed. It takes up almost the entire loft, with just enough space at the foot of the bed for a pile of clothes. I add my leather jacket and everything I was wearing under it to the heap before flopping onto my bed.
For a while, I lie there staring at my ceiling, gazing into the dark. The windows let in an ambient glow of streetlight. Occasionally a passing car breaks up the silence. Otherwise, it’s just me and my thoughts.
I bet Tim has some fancy apartment downtown. He’s famous now, or at least a lot closer to famous than Baptism Emperor. The sting in my chest isn’t only jealousy though. Even knowing I had to see him again, the experience was like transporting back into high school. I remember every smile, every kiss, every single God damn freckle. I was always so much harder and rougher than Tim. I’m the one with the tattoos curling down my legs and across my shoulders. I’m the one with the edgy undercut and the eyeliner. I even started dying my hair so it could go from naturally black to perfectly pitch black.
Yet that soft face flecked with freckles almost put me on my knees today.
It wasn’t supposed to be this way. The moment I found out management forced both bands together for this tour, I envisioned my glorious revenge, a chance to finally hurt Tim the way he hurt me. I didn’t expect to find a contrite and cringing shell of the boy I dated in Baltimore. Why isn’t he acting like a high and mighty rockstar? Why isn’t he lording it over me? Why does he have to look so damn good even in a T-shirt and jeans?
Why is my heart aching?
I growl at myself, pushing myself up to sitting. My apartment is dark and small and cold and empty. I don’t have fancy things. I still work a day job. I’m not a rockstar and probably never will be. But God damn it, I can drum. I know I can drum. So I’m going to make it my personal mission to out-drum Tim in front of the whole world during this tour.
Maybe it’s a hollow victory, but after all this time, I’m not above it. It’s not like I have anything else to comfort myself with. My life is contained in this shitty apartment, and it’ll probably never get better. I don’t even have a goldfish for company, let alone fame and fortune. No matter how well Baptism Emperor performs on this tour, we’ll never rise to The Ten Hours’ level. I’ll always be nothing. This is little more than a front-row seat to my ex’s glamorous rise to stardom.
It strikes me that nothing has changed. Absolutely nothing has changed. I’m still the loser fuck up; he’s still the good boy getting straight As. We’ve been apart all these years, but life placed us in the very same roles that made us incompatible back then.
Except this time, Tim Thatcher isn’t getting an opportunity to break my heart.
This time, I’ll break his.
It might not be right. It might not be mature. But it’s going to feel so damn good.