Riot
And what I hate about you
Is that you’re still here
Fucking with my band
Ruining my brain
My fingers move across the neck of my guitar, pressing and plucking at the wire strings until the notes mix perfectly. The words that had me stumbling from the warmth of my bed and the body beside me have grown into another song I am obsessed with.
Fuck. Fuck. Fuck.
The way Kelsey stared at me while I fucked the woman in my bed last night...
I can’t get it out of my mind. I almost fucking came buried to my balls in the blonde’s pussy.
Except the moment Kodiak took Kelsey’s hand and led her to his room I was left with a reel of fucking images I didn’t want instantly killing my boner.
“I can’t get it up,” I adlib a line that will never make it into the finished song. “But I can make you choke on it until you die.”
I put my guitar down and pick up my tin. Retrieving a joint, I stick it between my lips. I prowl out to the balcony, lighter in hand. The paper catches. The sweet buzz I inhale helps with the hangover and the comedown.
Fucking with my band
Ruining my brain
I put my hands on the railing and lean out over it while I force a deep, slow breath. Why did it take her showing up uninvited for me to be able to string some lyrics together? Two songs in two days after nothing for the last two years? This is bullshit.
Bronx steps out onto the balcony.
“Someone is grumpy this morning.” He acts like he hasn’t done anything to make me this way.
“Aren’t you? You had your tongue on her cunt yesterday, today she’s moaning for Kodiak.” Because those were noises I didn’t need to hear this morning. It’s almost as if she’s taunting me. Forcing me to face the fact she’s not taking my threat seriously.
He chooses to ignore my jab. “You wrote another song.”
“I did.” Which is why I’m pissed. Because I would have to be an idiot to miss that these hate-filled songs have only come into existence since she pushed her way back into my orbit.
“It sounds good.”
“It’s all right.” I shrug. But we both know it’s catchy.
Ruining my brain
Like I want to ruin you
Hate you, hurt you, fuck you
Why the fuck would I want to fuck that fucking bitch? Only last night I’d wanted her under me instead of the blonde. I’d wanted to punish her pussy as much as I want to punish her.
“What do you want?” I raise a brow at him over my shoulder.
The lines around his eyes deepen as he takes in my nudity. “Is giving the whole of downtown a free show a good idea?”
“Why the fuck is she back?”
“I think you’ve already worked out why.” He joins me at the railing.
Because I need her. No, not me. The music. The band. I don’t need her. I would prefer for her to slink away to where ever she came from and never show her face around me again. But... two songs written back-to-back... it’s been a long time since I’ve had that kind of inspiration.
And the beauty of it all is that I don’t have to change anything.
I can pretend she’s just another groupie hanging around.
So far, I haven’t even needed to be nice to her.
Or polite. Or even civil. These songs are coming from a place of raw hate.
I’m writing again. And I’d be a fool not to realize why that is. “I don’t like it.”
“I know.”
“You’re a fucking asshole.”
“Yeah well... you’re no pocket of sunshine either, brother,” he says, leaning against the railing.
Moments pass by. I take another puff and exhale deeply. Fuck it. “She can stay.”
Bronx nods. “Thank you. You’re doing the right thing for all of us.”
“That does not mean I’m going to like it.” I turn away from the railing and grind out my joint before flicking the butt into the ashtray. “And don’t expect me to suddenly change my opinion of the traitorous bitch. I’m not going to be nice to her.”
That won’t get songs written.
“Wouldn’t dream of it.”
“Once we have enough songs for a new album, she leaves.” I stretch up and scratch the back of my head as I walk inside. I’ll make sure she wishes she never came back long before that. “You need to make that clear to Kodiak.”
The dumb ass is probably halfway addicted to her already.
“Yeah, sure.” Bronx doesn’t sound thrilled by my conditions as he follows me inside, but that’s not my problem. He knew what to expect when he brought her here.
As if I would let either of them keep her. “You too. Don’t get all tangled up in her. You can be such a soppy romantic.”
“I suppose she’s off limits in every way,” he says.
Yes. “Why the hell should I care who fucks her?” I pull my black jeans from off the TV—not sure how they got there—and drag them up my legs. Walking around to the blonde’s side of the bed, I use my foot to bounce the mattress and wake her. “Rise and shine, beautiful.”
Did I ever get her name? I was too preoccupied with telling Kelsey to leave.
She smiles sleepily as she sits up, giving Bronx a full view of her tits. Pushes her hair out of her face. “Morning.”
“Sorry to do this to you. We have a full day today.” After months of preparation, we kick off the tour tonight with a huge opening gig right here in L.A. Everyone will be there. Industry professionals, label execs, and the big boss Carmine Savant.
Straight after that we’re on the buses overnight. We won’t be back for months. I scoop up her dress from the floor and hand it to her. “I’m going to need you to get your sexy ass up and out of here.”
Climbing out of my bed, she shimmies into her dress before hunting around for her panties. When she can’t find them, she grabs her shoes and heads for the door. She stops on the threshold and smiles at me. “Bye, Riot.”
“What else?” I ask Bronx. Since he hasn’t left, he must have more to say.
“Finish getting dressed.” He tosses a T-shirt at my chest. “We have somewhere to go before we go to the venue.”
“Where’s that?” I drag the cotton over my head and smooth it down my abs before grabbing my leather jacket.
“I need to pick something up.”
“Fine.” I drag a hand through my hair as I follow him through a hotel suite littered with empty bottles, and party stragglers. “Are the others coming? We need someone to watch her?”
“Golden is staying,” Bronx says as Kodiak comes out of his room.
He shrugs a jacket on over his flannel. “Ready?”
“Did you get the address?” Bronx asks him.
“Yeah. Let’s go.” Kodiak pulls the hood attached to his flannel over his head.
We take the elevator down to the parking garage and pile into the truck Bronx ordered.
Kodiak leans into the space between the front seats and gives the driver the address. Some place in the seedy part of town. “Picking up supplies?”
“Something like that,” Bronx focuses on staring at the headrest in front of him.
Kodiak on the other hand has a smug fucking look on his face. It lasts the whole distance from our hotel to neighborhoods that have seen better days. He grows tense as the buildings become dirtier and more dilapidated.
The tension in the car expands. The driver starts to fidget and look around more. A gaunt man stands on a corner with his hands in his pockets, looking shifty.
A couple of women in tiny dresses and a full face of makeup shiver on the following street. They smoke cigarettes while waiting for their next John to swing by.
Bronx starts to grind his teeth, creating a drum beat of sorts.
We pull up outside a tall gray apartment block with bars on the windows and a man huddled in the shelter of the stairs.
“Fucking hell.” Kodiak cranes his neck to look around, almost as though he is searching for the person who is going to step out and rob us at gunpoint.
“I could have gotten you anything you wanted without leaving the hotel,” I say to Bronx.
“No. You couldn’t. Now come on.” He climbs out and so does Kodiak. I follow suit and head into the building with them. It’s dark and musty inside. The old stairs creak under our weight as we climb several flights.
I side-step a patch of vomit. It stinks and makes me want to heave.
My bandmates both wear their mouths in grim lines; their shoulders hunched to the sky.
“What the hell are we doing here?”
Kodiak stops in front of a door with an eviction notice tacked to it. “We’re picking up Kelsey’s stuff.”
She lives in this dive.
“No fucking way.” They dragged me here for this. No wonder they didn’t tell me where we were going. There’s no chance I would have come. I don’t give a shit about her stuff. “I’ll be in the car.”
Bronx grabs a fistful of my shirt and presses that fist to the center of my chest. “I get it. You hate her for what she did to you. I can get behind that. But she has nothing. We’re going to go in there and take what we can.”
“Unless you want to see her wandering around in my flannels all the time,” Kodiak taunts.
“She did look mighty fine in one of my tanks the other night,” Bronx meets his eye. “The way it skimmed her mid-thigh.”
“Those legs are fucking sexy.” Kodiak grins at me, no doubt enjoying what he sees as my discomfort.
“Fine. Fuck it. We’ll get her stuff.” Just so I don’t have to hear them go on and on about how she’s cunt-matized them both. Idiots. “Should we call the super?”
“Of this building?” Bronx raises an eyebrow. He takes a tool out of his pocket and uses it to pick the lock.
The door swings in with a gentle shove.
The tiny living-bedroom-whatever space is scantily furnished. There’s a mattress on the floor. A ratty curtain hanging over the window has fallen on one side, letting in a triangle of light.
“Fucking hell,” Bronx says, probably remembering the much nicer, and furnished apartment she had the last time any of us had seen her. This place is a long way down from her previous one.
“She has like nothing,” Kodiak says grimly.
Looks like fate did me a favor and gave her exactly what she deserved. And now it’s put her back in my orbit so that I can get some karma of my own. But still, this is... it’s too much. Between this and the way she looks... it’s like she’s been barely surviving.
That’s not my problem though, is it? She’s nothing to me. Except for the means to our next album.
I feel Bronx watching me.
“What?” I know him well enough to assume he brought me here to soften me toward her. But that’s not going to happen. “Get what you came for and let’s get out of here. We have a concert to prepare for.”
It takes about ten minutes to pack up her shit. Her wardrobe is pitiful. What happened to all her clothes? We toss what’s left of her wardrobe and the remains of her shoe collection onto the bed. I find her panties and rifle through them like they’re old familiar trinkets.
Slim pickings these days.
On instinct I tuck a black, ruffled pair into my pocket before tossing the rest on the pile on the sheet. Her vibrator is stashed at the back. There’s no way she’s getting that back. No way I’m tossing it on the pile in front of Kodiak and Bronx. It might give them ideas.
Bronx adds her makeup, hair products and jewelery to the pile.
Kodiak pulls the corners of the sheet up and ties them together before putting it over his shoulder. Bronx scoops up a stack of books and a couple of other trinkets.
“Grab the shoebox in the cupboard?” Bronx orders as he follows Kodiak out.
I pull the heavy shoe box down from the shelf.
Her memento box. It used to be full of letters and photos of us. Bits and pieces of our friendship.
My jaw clicks as I stare at the lid. Curiosity burns me from the inside out.
I remove the lid and peek at the contents on top.
Dozens of pieces of lined note paper covered in my handwriting, folded painstakingly into origami stars.
Some of them are the lyrics to my early songs.
Some of them were letters I wrote to her.
Why would she keep them? Did she think they would be worth selling at some point? She clearly needs money.
I’ll be keeping these. And whatever else is in the box might come in handy as ammunition. I toss in her vibrator and close the lid.