Chapter Twenty-Three #2
“Excuse me? Remi? Remi Golding? I was wondering if I could get a picture with you? I love Tilted Haze,” an older woman asked and thrust her phone out to her friend. She grabbed his arm and cozied up next to him before he could respond.
Remi shook his head and extracted himself from her grip. “No. Sorry, no. Not today.”
“What? Why not?” She put her hands on her hips.
“I can’t. Sorry. Not today.” He tightened the strings of his hoodie over his baseball cap and started to walk away.
“Are you serious?” the woman yelled. “Is this how you treat your fans? You’re a selfish prick!”
Remi spun around. “I’m selfish? My brother is dead, and I should stop everything I’m doing to smile for your photo? You don’t even know me. You don’t like me. You like my music. You like me on stage and in the videos you watch on your phone. You don’t like me. You don’t know me!”
The woman curled her lip. “Yeah, and no one is going to like you when they see what an asshole you really are.”
Remi turned to find her friend filming the entire interaction. He stumbled back a few steps. Multiple cellphone cameras were pointed in his direction.
The reality of it slammed into him, cutting into his soft flesh. Not quite of regret, but loneliness. He was utterly alone. A cold wind whizzed by his ears. The backs of his eyes stung.
Even the people who knew him best, his bandmates, could barely stand him nowadays, and all these people? His fans were salivating at the chance to film his worst moments, the darkest of his days.
He’d pushed away his friends. His brother was dead. His mother wished he was dead. Skye was gone.
Skye was just gone.
He had no one. There was no one he could trust. No one he could turn to. Nowhere he could go.
He continued to step backward, but the crowd seemed to follow his retreat. A dark pressure was corralling him in, stealing his air, making it hard to breathe.
Everything was falling apart around him.
The fans, the label, the media—none of them actually liked him or his music.
He’d be kicked out of Tilted Haze soon. That was why Liam and Ollie and West kept so much from him lately.
He was a loose screw, a burden to deal with.
Without his band, his music, his friends, he’d really have nothing.
Jillian was only using him. The groupies he slept with didn’t care about him. And Skye…fucking Skye.
Skye was gone.
He had no one. Not his demon torturer, not his bandmates, not his mother. No one. Loneliness clawed up his throat. He had no one. Not when it came down to it.
He didn’t even have his brother.
It should have been me who died.
Remi shouldered his way out of the crowd, sprinting down the sidewalk and onto the street. Some people followed him, but he faked them out and cut down an alley.
When he thought he’d lost them, he slowed down.
His head darted right and left, waiting for someone to pop out.
He released a sigh when no one appeared.
The neon lights of a half-lit sign flickered on the pavement from the hole-in-the-wall bar with a shabby alleyway entrance.
This would be as good a place as any to hide out. He’d drink until he couldn’t see straight, call a cab, and hopefully, by that point, he could stumble into the tour bus and just sleep the rest of this awful day away.
He pushed open the metal door, which was dented and beat up, to walk into a tiny bar that had definitely seen better days.
The bar stools had probably been candy-apple red sometime in the 1980s, but now were dull, worn, and ripped up, the stuffing flattened from decades of drunk assholes bellying up to the bar like he was about to do.
The floor was sticky as he entered, and country music played low in the background. There were a few people at the other end of the bar, but he ignored them. At least no one would recognize him here.
The bartender nodded his greeting and put down a square napkin. “What can I get you?”
“Whiskey neat,” Remi said, annoyed with himself that Skye’s drink was the first thing out of his mouth, but he couldn’t bring himself to pick anything else either. “Make it a double.”
The bartender grabbed a bottle and poured him the drink.
Remi took a hearty swallow, focusing on the scuffs in the wood on the edge of the counter. He should probably just find a liquor store and get a handle of something. It’d be faster and cheaper.
But he didn’t know if those fans would be waiting for him, so he resigned himself to staying here for a little while.
He tossed his head back, finishing his whiskey and motioning for a refill. The bartender complied without a word spoken between them.
He wasn’t sure how many drinks deep he was when two men sat beside him. The bartender hadn’t cut him off yet, so that was something, maybe, possibly. He hadn’t fallen off the bar stool yet, another win. Woo.
He wanted a cigarette, but even this little hole-in-the-wall bar had a no-smoking sign.
So he kept his fingers busy by tearing the square napkin in front of him into tiny pieces while playing a fun little drinking game in his head.
He listed every single thing he’d done in the last six years that Emerson would have yelled at him for.
You lost your first record deal because you used my death as an excuse to be a drunken lowlife for years, Emerson said in his head.
Drink.
You were fired from how many jobs? I stopped counting after the fifth one.
Drink.
You treat Mom like shit. You treat everyone like shit. You treated Skye like shit too.
Drink.
The guy to his left bumped his shoulder. “Sorry,” he mumbled. Remi only nodded and went back to ripping his napkin into tiny shreds.
You’re twenty-five years old and have no savings, no career, no college degree. When the band kicks you out, Tilted Haze won’t finish the tour, and the label won’t pay you out, leaving you and your friends even more poor than you started.
Drink. Drink. Drink.
“Doesn’t the metal on your mouth scare away the girls?”
Remi blinked and turned to the man. He wore a red flannel over a white shirt. He was probably only a little older than Remi, but his skin was weathered and wrinkly on his hands. Hairy knuckles rapped on the bar next to his drink.
“Hey, I asked you a question,” he said.
Maybe a hole-in-the-wall bar in Alabama hadn’t been the best idea. He almost felt nostalgic for the last time he’d been called out for his piercings and tattoos. Back when Skye was manipulating his life and getting him fired from his job.
Ah, good times.
“No,” Remi mumbled. “Never heard a complaint.” He swallowed the rest of his drink.
“No?”
“Maybe he doesn’t like girls,” his buddy said. He was wearing a matching flannel to his friend’s, just in blue.
Remi bit his tongue to keep from responding. God, he wished his nail polish hadn’t chipped off. That would’ve really given them something to get upset about.
“I’d think it’d scare away the boys too. You want to kiss that?” Red Flannel asked.
“Fuck off,” Blue Flannel said. “I’m not a homo.”
Remi’s grip tightened around his empty glass.
“Oh, no. I think we pissed him off,” one of the flanneled fuckers said.
The heat of indignation flared in Remi’s chest. He took a deep breath through his nose to try to cool down. “It’s 2018. I think the gay jokes can be retired, don’t you? I mean, same-sex marriage has been legal now for years.”
Remi caught the bartender’s eye and made a sign for the check, almost proud of himself for walking away instead of engaging in battle. Emerson would be proud too. He hated when Remi got into fights with his idiot football friends.
Why would I be proud of you for doing what you’re literally supposed to do? Emerson’s voice countered in his head.
Or not.
“Gay marriage ain’t legal ’round here,” Blue Flannel said. “That’s for sure. We ain’t letting homos get married. We voted to ban it. It’s in our state constitution that marriage is between a man and a woman.”
Remi gritted his teeth and handed the bartender his credit card.
He used a calm, neutral voice to respond.
“Actually, same-sex marriage is federally legal in all fifty states, whether or not your backward-ass state constitution banned it. That amendment, by the way, was ruled unconstitutional, so you might want to check up on your facts.”
“You calling me stupid, boy?” Blue Flannel asked.
Remi signed the check, stood, and put his credit card back in his wallet. He didn’t make eye contact with either of them, nor did he shout a resounding “Yes!” to Blue Flannel’s question.
Come on, Em. You gotta be proud of me for that.
Remi turned to leave, but Red Flannel grabbed his shoulder. “Hey! We’re talking to you!”
Remi tried. He really tried to leave. He hadn’t risen to the bait—much, but these fuckers’ hands on him was the last straw.
Red Flannel shoved him, and Remi swung his fist and clocked him in the nose. He could have sworn he heard Emerson’s dramatic and disappointed sigh in his head as the Flannel Fuckers pummeled him to the ground.
The muffled sound of sirens pierced his eardrums, so loud he almost couldn’t hear his brother’s voice anymore.
Emerson’s next words didn’t truly register in his consciousness, but something about them zinged through him, truer and more real than anything his imagination had ever managed to conjure before.
I knew you’d end up in jail if West and I weren’t around to save you from yourself.