41. ELLY
41
ELLY
T he Marchmont is busier than normal. Marcia’s pissed because it means she has to work doubly hard, and we don’t have the staff. All these people are here to see me. I never thought that putting my music out there… showing up on social media would make this kind of difference, and to see the impact trickling all the way down here, to the basement of the Marchmont, is mind-blowing.
Although, I guess they could all be here because they’ve seen me naked. The thought makes me want to vomit, but I can’t hide forever.
I don’t look into the crowd. I know it makes me look scared and amateur, but for now, it’s the only way I can do it. Keeping my focus on the music and deliberately pretending there is no audience allows me to push through.
The crowd is appreciative tonight, but even so, my stomach is a tangle of nerves. On one of my songs, the crowd started singing the lyrics with me which has never, ever happened before. They already knew it. I almost stopped entirely and ran away at that point. But then a small voice pipes up that this is what I wanted.
All those years ago, when I first dared to dream of being a musician… I imagined it. Maybe not a little place like the Marchmont, but packed stadiums full of people singing my words back to me, waving their mobile phones like fireflies on a summer evening.
Could I have that? Is that even possible?
Maybe. Maybe not. But for now, I’m here, in the Marchmont, and for the first time, the crowd is here for me. Not for the cheap beer. Not for the shitty comedy act that was on stage before. But for me.
I’m slowly allowing the crowd’s energy to feed me. Gaining in confidence. I’m enjoying this. And then I introduce my last song. The one I wrote after Nico’s party.
“This one is called Playing Your Games, and I wrote it over the last few weeks. It’s about someone…” A sudden knot of emotion forms at the base of my throat, but I swallow it down. I can’t sing if I start to cry. I clear my throat and continue. “Someone I fell in love with, but it didn’t work out.”
I shift the microphone and begin strumming the opening chords in a combination that sends chills racing over my skin, and I can tell from the sudden hush in the room that I’m not the only one.
Playing your games will kill me,
You force me out and knock me down,
Hold me till I drown.
I’m afraid to play, afraid to lose
Every kiss is just another bruise.
The sound of your laugh will break me
Like the rush of a storm through broken seams,
But please, oh please, don’t wake me,
From my twisted dreams.
As I continue, lost in the words, voice rising and falling through the melody, I realise when I’m a few verses in that the crowd are singing the chorus with me… and they’ve never heard it before. They've caught on so quickly. I've finally written something that resonates. And to think, it only took the worst heartbreak of my life to inspire it.
I can’t be loved and I can’t be saved.
I can’t leave and I can’t go
Because there’s nothing else I’d rather do
Than stay and play with you
Even if it kills me.
I move into the final verse, buoyed by the response, when I hear the shout. I can’t make it out, but the sound jars me like a barrage of wrong notes, and I stop singing. I raise my head for the first time, staring out beyond the lights, making out the faces in the crowd.
Restlessness spreads like a disease and people shuffle in their seats, trying to see who shouted.
That’s when I see the heckler. “You’re no fucking good.” He shouts again, clear enough that I can hear him. “If you’re not getting naked, get off the stage.”
Dread turns my insides to ice. For a few seconds, I do nothing. But I force myself to gather my wits. If I want to keep performing, I’m going to have to face people like this eventually.
I bring the microphone to my lips, affecting a smirk as I say, “Been there, done that. Sadly no t-shirt to show for it.” I balance on one foot, kicking out the other to display my cowboy boot. “Still got these though.”
Laughter, awkward and weak, trickles around the room. Fuck, this is painful. What was I hoping for? Raucous applause? I’m not a comedian.
A sleazy smile breaks over the heckler’s face, and before I know it, he’s barging towards me, dodging between tables at speed. He cups his hands about his mouth in a makeshift megaphone and yells, “Show us your tits! No one wants you with your clothes on.”
Fear spreads like a web through my body, sticking me in place as the man lurches up to the stage, still rattling off insults I can no longer make out over the roaring of blood in my ears and the shocked murmurs of those in the audience.
A few tables away, someone stands up. “Stay the fuck away from her.” The familiar voice makes my heart boom so hard I swear my ribcage rattles. Jack . He’s here, rising from his seat to his full six-foot-four and marching towards the heckler, who is now only a few paces away.
Hope battles with the fear that’s overtaken me, but the man is getting closer and Jack’s still too far away. Fuck . The drunken heckler reaches out to grope me, and I let out a yelp, staggering back, using my guitar like a shield.
Just as his fingers are about to close over the neck of my guitar, Jack leaps to the stage in one massive step, grabbing the guy by the collar and hauling him backwards.
“Fuck off! Let go!” the man yells, appearing so small in Jack’s grasp that he’s like a puppet being dangled from its strings. Jack releases him, and he staggers a few steps backwards before righting himself.
People are shouting, squealing, and generally joining in on the chaos. Flashes explode as people take photographs on their phones.
“Apologise to her,” Jack snarls. “Apologise, or your face and my fist are gonna get really fucking friendly.”
Oh, God. “No—”
“Who the hell are you?” the man bites out, glaring at Jack and ignoring me. “I’ll say whatever the fuck I want to her.”
Jack’s expression warps with a degree of wrath I’ve never seen on him. It looks like it takes every ounce of his self-control not to pummel the guy. But the man must be on a death mission because he barrels towards Jack head first, like he wants to use his skull as a battering ram.
At the last second, Jack pulls back his fist and strikes the man’s jaw in a neat uppercut, sending his head whipping back. The man lets out a raw scream.
I squeal.
“Shit. Fuck!” someone shouts.
“Fight, fight,” comes another voice, others quickly joining the chant.
“I fucking warned you,” Jack grits out, pacing towards the man, whose face scrunches in terror as he stumbles to escape. His foot slips off the stage, and he loses balance, arms flailing. Almost in slow motion, he topples off the edge. His head cracks against a table, knocking pint glasses flying. A woman erupts from her seat, hands covering her mouth, as he collapses to the ground at her feet.
The event unleashes a torrent of latent chaos in the room, and everyone surges from their seats, yelling and bumping into one another. The heckler seemingly has friends, who forge through the crowd, surrounding him and hauling him up so his face is visible, revealing what looks like a broken nose, blood gushing down his chin.
Jack stalks towards the group of them, undeterred by the fact he’s outnumbered. Holy fuck, there’s going to be a proper brawl in here.
Fear seals my feet to the floor, my body seizing up and going numb with the shock of it. He can’t possibly fight all those men. It would be violent and awful, but the thought unlocks something in my heart, unleashing a heat that scorches my lungs. He wants to fight for me.
“Stop,” Kate screeches. I turn to see her pushing her way through the tables. Nico, Seb, and Matt jump from their seats too, heading towards Jack. Nico reaches him first, grabbing his arm and pulling him away, shouting something in his ear that I can’t make out. Seb and Matt hover nearby, no doubt ready to make sure Jack isn’t charged with murder by the end of the night. Whatever they’re saying to him, it must be registering, because he isn’t making a move, despite the powerful, frustrated energy coming off him that tells me he’d rather be turning the man’s brains to pulp.
The heckler’s friends are lurching at Nico, Matt, Seb… anyone in the area. They look desperate to fight, but Seb looks more preoccupied with keeping his suit clean, stepping out of reach, whereas Matt and Nico are like bodyguards, rigidly sticking to Jack’s side, preventing him from getting involved. Not that the men notice; they’re so drunk that they start fighting with each other, throwing hapless punches and swerving into furniture. One of them knocks into another punter, who shouts back, and the brawl spreads through the bar like wildfire.
Marcia is suddenly beside me, grabbing my arm. “Quick. Out. Now.”
But I resist, pulling back against her. “I’m not running this time.”
Leaving my guitar on the stage, I hop down, scooping up a full beer from a table nearby, ignoring the shocked expression of the man whose drink I swiped.
When I reach the scuffle, the heckler is sitting on the floor, being propped up by a friend, and it’s then, as I look closer, that I realise these are the same fucking men from the last time I was heckled in here. Bastards .
The man’s bloodshot gaze shifts towards me. His face is a bloody mess, but I know he sees me, because he chokes out, “Go on. Take your clothes off.”
I step right up to him, and in that moment he represents every single one of the people who’s ever heckled me or abused me online.
I lift the pint of beer high over his head. “Fuck you.” And then I pour the entire thing over his face, delighting in the way the bastard coughs and splutters, bringing up a mixture of blood and alcohol. I hope that fucking stings.
It’s then that Marcia appears, yanking my arm and hissing in my ear, “Jesus, Elly. You’ll scare all the punters away for good.” Before I know it, security is ushering me out the back door.
It’s only when I’m standing out on the street, the cold night air biting my cheeks, that I realise there’s one person who really deserved a beer thrown in their face.
Lydia .
I can’t do anything about that now. But there is one thing I can do that will show her I don’t care about what she did. That I’m big enough to get through it. That I can really let all this shit slide off, just the way Jack urged me to. That she can’t fucking touch me, no matter how low she’s prepared to stoop.
I take out my phone, bring up Robert Lloyd’s contact, and call. But when he doesn’t answer, I send a text message.
Me: Hey Robert, it’s Elly Carter. Sorry it’s taken me so long to get in touch. If you still want to meet regarding representing me, you can get me on this number, but I understand if you don’t. Please let me know, either way.
I wake to the sound of my phone ringing, the name Robert Lloyd flashing on the screen as I scrabble for the phone. “Hi, Robert.” I sound stupidly breathy.
“Elly. Great to hear from you. I thought you were going to do a runner again…” He trails off, then collects himself. “In answer to your question. Yes, I still want to represent you.”
My heart leaps, but I have to check he knows what he’s saying. I need to know he has the full picture. “What about… the photos?”
He lets out a huff so loud and dismissive that I pull the phone from my ear for a second. “I don’t care about the photos. They’re gorgeous. You’re gorgeous. It’s all good. Most of all, your voice and your songs are absolute winners. Chart-toppers, Elly.”
Did he just say what I think he did? Is this really going to be okay? Is it possible that my career didn’t turn to a pile of steaming crap overnight?
I’m chewing hard on my lip to stop from smiling, just in case this is a dream. “Thank you.”
A beat of silence has my pulse spiking. “I’ve been waiting for your call for weeks. What took so long?” he asks.
I blink back the tears that are rising. “It was all… it was too much. The photos, the stuff on the internet. It got me down.”
“Ah.” He pauses for so long I wonder if he has hung up, but then he says, “I get that. But in this business you need a thick skin. This may not be the worst that will hit you once we’ve got you properly positioned in the market. I need to know you can handle it, because if you can’t, it’ll break you. You have to be ready.”
“I am.”
“You’re sure? Because I’m willing to bet on you. I’ve got your back, but I need to know you’re gonna stay standing, no matter what comes your way.”
“I will. I promise. I want this.” This time, I really mean it.
“Okay. We’ll get you signed on. Amy’s keen to work with you. Does that sound good?”
My heart flutters, my palms grow sweaty. “Yes. Yes. More than good. I’d love that.”
“Okay, then. I’ll be in touch.”
I hang up and lie back on my bed, revelling in the moment. It’s going to be okay. Everything is going to be fine.
My heart sputters. How can anything be fine when I haven’t sorted things out with Jack?