Chapter TenSomebody
Chapter Ten:
Somebody
Sidney
Answer your fucking phone, Carter.
Pacing, I shake my head when Carter’s phone goes to voicemail for the third time. “Nothing. Has anyone gotten ahold of Levi?”
Bash shakes his head along with everyone else. “I’m good, go get his ass.”
Adrenaline pumps through me as I race through the arena and try to figure out where the hell we parked. Yet again, Levi is late. He missed soundcheck entirely, and he isn’t answering anyone’s calls. If he’s passed out, I’ll kill him — I just have to find him first.
It takes help from three security guards to find my way to the back parking lot, and when I notice the light on in Levi’s trailer, my hands ball into fists.
I swear to God.
“Levi!” I yell, slamming my fist on the door. “If you don’t open this door in five seconds, I’m coming in!”
I don’t wait the five seconds I offered.
Rushing inside, I find him lying on the bed with a pillow covering his face, so I stomp over to rip it off ready to murder him, and then stop dead in my tracks.
Where I expect to find him high out of his mind, what I find is something else entirely.
He’s stone cold sober, and from the look of it, you’d think he never performed on stage in his entire life. “Sid, I think I’m dying.”
What in the...
Huffing, I take a second to breathe and soak in what I’m seeing. First he wants to hold hands and now he’s got stage fright?
“You’re not dying. Not yet, anyway. I’m too skinny to protect you when everyone you’ve ever met dogpiles you for missing the show.”
He covers his eyes with both palms, and growls. “I missed it? What time is it?”
“You didn’t miss it yet, but you’re on in fifteen. You missed soundcheck.” Sitting on the edge of his bed, I bump his knee. “What’s going on? And where the fuck is Carter?”
“I don’t know. He went to get some shit.” Drugs. He went to get drugs. “I told him I didn’t want any blow, but he went anyway. Can I...”
He trails off and abruptly grabs my hand, tugging me so I have to scoot in a little closer.
I won’t complain.
Lacing my fingers with his, I meet his eyes. “You’re the best drummer I’ve ever seen. Why are you nervous?”
“I’m not nervous,” he lies. “I was getting ready, and then all of a sudden my chest got so tight it felt like I couldn’t inhale fully, and it made me hot and nauseous. I think a heart attack was starting, but it changed its mind.”
He absentmindedly rubs his chest, and I sit there trying to figure out how to explain a panic attack to a grown man.
“Not a heart attack, but similar. It’s called a panic attack. Do you feel okay now?”
“But I wasn’t panicking. I—” He takes a breath, and then decides not to argue. “I do now, yeah. This helps.”
He squeezes my hand as a faint blush takes over his cheeks like that was hard for him to admit, but I have a feeling it’s harder for me to hear.
In less than 24 hours he undid weeks of me convincing myself I didn’t care about him like that.
When he asked to hold my hand on the bus I tried to say no, tried to talk myself out of saying yes at least — but at the end of the day, I will always be hopelessly in love with this impossible man, and I’ll take whatever scraps I can get.
“We need to go then. Will you come with me?”
“Fuck. Yeah, okay. Bash is going to kick my ass.”
He pulls himself from the bed and I find myself thanking all of the gods that he’s already dressed. Now that he’s awake too, it doesn’t take long to get him back where he needs to be and in the hands of his band.
I don’t know what’s gotten into him lately, but I do know that he’s different. Something inside him has shifted, and if I’m not careful... he’s going to drag me down even deeper this time.
I’VE NEVER SEEN LEVI play so well in my life. Usually his talent and appeal comes from drug-induced chaos — his rhythm is fine, but notes get missed, and he makes up for it with showmanship and raw energy.
But tonight, perfectly, beautifully sober, Levi Cross set a new precedent for what drummers should be. His technique was flawless, energy contagious, and he looked so fucking alive up there that it actually killed me a little.
This is what he’s been missing. What we’ve all been missing. Who knows where Hollow Apparition would be on the charts if he was always like this? Who knows where we’d be if he let himself be vulnerable five years ago?
I can spend all night thinking about the what-ifs and if-only’s, but now the show is over and it’s time for the first after party of this tour.
Maybe a little stupidly, I’m choosing to sit it out.
He says he doesn’t want meaningless sex this time, but I’m not sure the pool of potential partners has ever been larger.
I wasn’t the only one who noticed the changes in him tonight, and I’m not about to sit there and watch as he gets sucked in by some pretty girl with basketballs for tits or a skinny little twink like me that he can fuck without the baggage.
Besides, I’m tired. Despite Carter’s lackadaisical approach to handling, it’s not as easy as it looks. The physical load is manageable but the mental load will really take it out of you if you’re not careful, and unfortunately, I’m rarely careful.
So, as early as I can, I sneak away from the group back into my trailer and stop dead when I close the door behind me.
It smells like sex in here.
“What the hell?” I mumble, sniffing again and setting my phone down on my desk. It’s definitely sex I’m smelling, and I know it’s not from me — much to the chagrin of most of the partners I’ve ever been with, I like the taste of my own cum. I don’t waste it, so the scent rarely lingers.
My bedsheets are messed up which tells me without a doubt that someone else was in here.
I’m no clean freak — there are scrap papers lying on my desk, a shirt I tried on and hated laying on the floor, and the trash definitely needs changed — but I always make my bed.
It gaslights me into believing I have my life together even just a little bit, and I don’t know many feelings better than crawling into a nice, tidy bed after a long day.
Someone fucked in my bed.
Scowling, I change the sheets and go to change the trash as well when I notice the tissues sitting on top. Crusty, gross tissues that I’d bet my life aren’t covered in snot.
Jesus Christ, is nothing sacred anymore?
Grabbing the bag, I head back out to the parking lot where I catch the crew packing the equipment away. “Hey!” I yell. “Which one of you decided my trailer was a rent-by-the-hour motel?”
“Huh?” Steve’s eyes flick between my face and the bag in my hand a few times, then at his partner Gabe. They’re unbeatable when it comes to camerawork, but anything else? They don’t have two brain cells to rub together. “It wasn’t us.”
“I don’t get it,” Gabe adds, both of them looking so confused I know it wasn’t them.
“Whoa, what’s going on here?”
Finally someone with half of a functioning brain. Bash seems to have come looking for me after I slipped away, so maybe I can put him to use before I have to explain why I don’t want to go.
“Someone broke into my trailer, fucked in my bed, and then decided instead of using a condom or jizzing somewhere inside of the person they were with, they cleaned up with tissues and threw them in my trash can. Here. Proof.” I hold out the bag as Bash recoils with a grossed-out laugh.
“My whole trailer smells like sex and it wasn’t me. ”
“We know,” Frank scoffs. “No one having sex is as cranky as you, Crane. Chill. We were all busy keeping shit running tonight.”
“Was it unlocked?” Bash asks, and I have to take a second to think about it. I always lock my trailer. I’m the type of person who checks three or four times, but did I today?
Yes, of course I did. My most prized possessions are in there.
“It was locked, yes. I guess that narrows it down to whores who know how to pick locks.”
Steve snorts. “That’s probably half the crew. You know Bash has always had a soft spot for the people who can’t get a job out there because of records and shit. Good luck.”
“You’re not helping,” Kelly offers, shooing them all away. “Try asking Darius. He was walking around the area before the show ended.”
She walks off just as Bash backhands my arm a little too excitedly. “Hey, remember that nanny cam? I still got it if you want it. I found my intruder much faster that way than if I had interrogated the staff.”
His intruder also didn’t work with us, but he might be onto something.
People lie, videos that you record yourself do not.
“I’ll definitely borrow the camera, but while we’re on the subject, I feel like we need better security.”
“Probably,” he chuckles, leading the way toward his trailer. “I’ll talk to Darius. It’s hard to put up cameras when we change cities every night, but maybe we could have some standard ones installed for doorbells or something.”
“Or maybe people who actually... I don’t know. Secure the trailers.” Grumbling, I follow him up and collapse into the armchair by the tv. “I feel like someone’s punking me.”
He pulls the bear out of his closet and sets it next to me, and suddenly he seems to not want to meet my gaze, but because of that I don’t have a clue what he’s thinking. “Maybe. And who would do something like that?”
“I don’t know. I hear what some of them say, especially the ones who knew Leo was sleeping with other people. Bullies exist everywhere,” I say quietly. “This is just admittedly a weird way to bully someone.”
“And people are weird as fuck,” he adds unhelpfully. “But what if someone isn’t bullying you, and really just didn’t have anywhere to go?”
“Then that’s even more concerning because you know damned well the crew stays in the nicest hotels we can find and the rest of us have our own trailers.
” Picking up the bear, I stare into his beady little eyes.
“Who wouldn’t have somewhere better to have sex than the smallest trailer with the smallest bed?
Goldilocks would shit herself at the poor choice. ”
Bash laughs softly and collapses onto his bed. “I bet she would. And what will she do when she finds the culprit?”
“I don’t know what the little fictional girl would do other than sick Papa Bear on them, but I’m planning to publicly shame them, get biometric locks, and deliver a box of condoms to whoever it was. And maybe punch them in the face, I’m good at that now.”
Grinning, he finally meets my eyes again. “Are you, now? And how’d you get better than that last one, because our boy didn’t have a mark for my wedding?”
Don’t fucking remind me.
“He showed up and made sure I could do it better next time.” Realizing I never told Bash this story because I didn’t want to tell him I ended things with Leo, and also that he needs to be at the after-party and not sitting here with me, I try to walk it back.
“I’m just kidding. I took a self-defense class. ”
He must see something on my face because although he looks skeptical, he surprises me when he doesn’t push. “Yeah, okay.” Standing, he nods his head and walks toward the door. “But you’re telling me this self-defense class story soon. I’ll be patient for now.”
He leaves before I can respond, and I only wait a few seconds before I follow his lead and head back to my own trailer to hide the nanny cam.
I don’t know how my life got so complicated, but something tells me this is only just the beginning — I’m stuck here for the next four months.
This isn’t as fine as I’d hoped.