Chapter Twenty
After back-to-back shows for five nights straight, the band should have been getting sleep on their three-day break in Milwaukee, but coop up a group of eight twenty-something guys together in a do-nothing town and sleep would be the last thing on anyone’s mind.
Remi spent most of the first day scrolling social media and analyzing the DMs he was getting from fans telling him his last few shows were “off.” He poured over the setlist and watched every fan video that had been uploaded to see if he could figure out where he was lacking, but it only drove him crazier.
In a coked-up rage, he threw his phone against the wall in the hotel and vowed to take the rest of the mini break easy. Anything to get the nagging voice in the back of his head to shut the fuck up.
Taking it easy took the form of getting everyone together in his hotel room, drinking and doing whatever drugs they had left from the last major city they scored in.
“I bet I can hang from that,” Liam said, pointing to the light fixture on the ceiling. His words were slurred, or maybe Remi’s brain was just a little fuzzy.
“No!” Jillian shouted, but her laughing was more an encouragement than anything else.
She was perched on Remi’s lap in the chair in the corner of the room.
She’d already taken off to shoot her skincare ad and had rejoined them in the next city.
Remi was delighted because Skye hated it, and he’d been trying to get Jillian to stay on the tour longer.
“Hold my beer, doll,” Liam said, handing his beer to Jillian.
Ollie jumped up from the bed and swiped everything off the dresser, but he was just as wasted as the rest of them because he laid his entire body on the dresser and swiped absolutely everything to the ground—including the TV.
“Oops,” he said and literally giggled.
Remi spurt out some of his beer. The fizz of it bubbled up the back of his throat as he laughed. “What the fuck kind of noise was that, Olls?”
Ollie stood, swayed more like, and wagged a finger at Remi, or in Remi’s general direction because he was off by about three feet. “I don’t judge your noises, mate. Don’t judge mine.”
“What noises do I make?” Remi asked, taking a swig from his beer bottle.
Ollie grabbed Liam’s waist—Liam, who was still trying to climb onto the dresser but kept slipping—and Ollie started humping him, thrusting his hips toward Liam’s ass obscenely, making the loudest “uh uh uh” noises.
Liam laughed and started fake moaning, pitching his voice higher. “Yeah, harder, Remi.”
Jillian narrowed her eyes. “Is that supposed to be me?”
They both froze and straightened in comical speed.
“No.”
“Course not, mate.”
“It’s all the girls before you, Jillian,” Liam said, throwing his shoulders back like he was proud of that save.
She pressed her lips together but tossed her hair over her shoulder and readjusted herself on Remi’s lap. “He doesn’t make those sounds with me, so I think your impression needs work.”
“Oh, should I do the ones that he made while he fucked Skye?” West said, slurring. Then he growled, “I hate you.” Making a girlish voice, he continued, “No, I hate you more.” And for the finale he just curled his fingers like he was scratching the air and said, “Grrr.”
“Grrr?” Liam asked, and Ollie bent over at the waist, laughing hard enough that he fell over. Just toppled right over onto the ground.
Jillian stiffened, but Remi stroked his fingers up and down her arm, unbothered by his friends ragging on him.
Liam tried to help Ollie off the floor, but they ended up in a pile on top of each other—both of them giggling.
West was smiling at nothing, staring at the ceiling. He put his hand up through the air like he was touching something no one else could see.
“What did you give them?” Remi asked Jillian.
She shrugged. “I didn’t give them anything.”
Remi’s eyebrows drew together in concern. “What are you guys on?”
“What aren’t we on?” Ollie said, and Liam made a raspberry noise with his lips as he burst out laughing.
“Pretty sure it’s acid,” West said with a huge grin as he floated his hands in the air. Then, with a stern face, he flipped off the ceiling. “Fuck off with your shit. I don’t want to hear it.”
“Who are you talking to, West?” Ollie asked.
Liam burst out laughing again.
West rolled his eyes and waved a hand, gesturing to the ceiling. “Emerson.”
Remi’s heart plummeted into his stomach.
Ollie furrowed his brow, and Liam straightened up from his curled over laughing fit, turning to stare at Remi.
Pushing Jillian off, Remi stood from the chair.
“What? What’s wrong?” she asked.
“You didn’t give them acid?” Remi asked, fury in his voice.
Jillian threw her palms up. “No, I swear. What’s wrong? Who’s Emerson?”
Remi sprinted through the trashed hotel room, kicking over piles of clothes and blankets and random takeout bags. He fell to his hands and knees and started throwing empty beer cans and bottles, searching, searching, until…
There.
He got on his stomach and inched under the bed, reaching for the water bottle with a little bit of pink liquid in it. He brandished the bottle in the air. “Is this what you’ve been drinking?”
Liam nodded, his eyes clear, suddenly the most sober of them all. “Yeah. Levi gave it to us.”
“Did he tell you it was acid?” Remi asked.
Liam shrugged. “Just said it’d get us fucked up. We didn’t ask too many questions. Remi, it’s not like West actually sees your brother. It’s just a hallucination. Don’t get mad at him.”
“I’m not—” Remi took a deep breath. He twisted the cap off the bottle and chugged the remaining liquid. There wasn’t much left, but hopefully he’d get something. He slumped down on the floor with his back against the bed.
“I’m not mad,” he said, his usual darkness creeping into the edges of his vision, the depressive heaviness that usually meant he needed to do another line. He resisted this time. He may be drunk and high on coke, but he knew better than to keep mixing shit.
“Don’t let me do more coke,” he said, straightening his leg and fishing out the baggie, handing it to Jillian.
She bent down and nodded, taking it and walking toward the door. “I’ll go put this somewhere you can’t reach it.”
“Good,” he said, though his mouth was full of cotton. His words foreign to his own ears.
Jillian left the room.
Remi climbed onto the bed and laid next to West, who was still smiling at the ceiling with his hands resting on his stomach.
“I want to see him too,” Remi said, whispering into the ether. He stared at the swirls in the ceiling until they started turning into shapes. He squinted really hard and waited for the acid to kick in. For Emerson to show up.
Liam and Ollie were making a bunch of noise in the corner of the room, but Remi forced himself to focus, to look for his twin brother.
If West could see him, then Remi could too.
They shared blood. Identical twins shared, like, the same DNA, right? Skye was a demon for Christ’s sake. Maybe Emerson was a mystical being too. Or maybe he was just a figment of West’s imagination, but Remi didn’t care which it was. He just wanted a glimpse.
“What’s he saying?” Remi asked.
“He doesn’t say much,” West said. “Mostly he glares at me and tells me to stop doing drugs and makes fun of Liam for being an idiot.”
Remi nodded. “That does sound like him.”
“It’s like—” West broke off. His words dissolved into the air. Remi watched the way the words turned into blue butterflies and flew to the ceiling, then hung upside down like bats.
“What? Like what?” Remi prompted.
“It’s like…” West started again. “He almost looks…sorry? Like he wishes he could apologize but can’t.”
Remi licked his lips. West’s blue butterfly words fell from the ceiling like knives and stabbed Remi in the gut. “He is sorry, West.”
“You always gave him too much credit,” West said.
Remi sighed. He couldn’t tell West what he meant without letting on that he knew their secret, so he just laid there.
“He texted me that he was sorry on the day he died,” Remi said. West knew this. Remi had told him before, but it felt like the only thing he could use as proof.
“Yeah, I know,” West said. “And he should be sorry for what he did to you.”
He was sorry for what he did to you too.
Remi knew it to be true. He knew the hurtful and terrible things he heard in his head that sounded like his brother’s voice weren’t the way Emerson actually felt.
Maybe it was twin telepathy or some kind of inner knowing, but Remi knew Emerson loved them, except knowing that didn’t erase the wounds from the past, and Emerson was dead. He wasn’t around to clear it up.
Remi interlaced his fingers and squeezed them together to keep words from spilling out and making West feel worse.
“I think Emerson would like Skye,” West said.
“What?”
“I think he’d like her because she makes you miserable just like he did. The douchebag would be happy that someone else can make your life horrible.”
“West...” Remi didn’t like this. Didn’t like the lines on West’s face turning down. He recognized the beginnings of a bad trip. “You were smiling at Emerson before,” he said, trying to get them to happier topics. “Why?”
West grimaced. “Because seeing him means that I’m not going crazy every time I think I hear his voice.”
Remi’s heart pounded; he felt the pulse thud thud thudding through all of his limbs.
He sat up on his elbows and watched West. He opened his mouth to say something—anything to stop whatever turmoil West was in.
The image of West in a white padded room, talking to the walls, made Remi panic.
What if Skye hadn’t been lying? What if that crystal ball had really shown the future? What if West really needed help—
The spiral of his desperate thoughts halted as two things happened at once.
Liam had finally crawled onto the dresser, and Ollie encircled his arms around his calves and carried him to the center of the room so Liam could grab onto the hanging ceiling light. He hollered in excitement as he started swinging from it.