Chapter Twenty-Six #3
“Tilted Haze will be the first to tell you that we are all a bunch of weirdos and outcasts. That’s what rock music is, and for me, as well as West, Liam, and Ollie, we love getting beaten and bruised up in the pits as much as the next guy or gal.
I mean, just look at my face”—Remi gestured to his black eye and the blood and dirt still all over him—“but what I saw at our show today wasn’t good.
There was a lot of misplaced hostility due to rumors that Tilted Haze somehow got Crushing Skulls kicked out of the festival, which couldn’t be further from the truth.
But what’s worse is that even if everyone in the crowd today was pissed at Tilted Haze—fine—we can take your boos, we can take your beer cans and your anger, but what was unacceptable was the way the crowd turned on each other. ”
Remi ignored Jillian’s protesting squawk as he grabbed the phone off the tripod.
He started walking through the field and flipped the camera angle to one of the empty stages.
“See from up there, I can see everything that’s going on.
I can see when ya’ll are beating the shit out of each other, when you’re stage diving and crushing people to the ground, when you’re failing to pick up the people who fall, when you fight and elbow one another to get to the front. ”
Remi switched the camera around so his face filled the screen.
“And I can fucking see when you guys are grabbing girls who don’t want to be touched, shoving each other, and being fucking assholes.
It’s not everyone, and I’ve never seen it at a Tilted Haze concert, but the shit I saw today was terrible.
I saw people getting trampled, kicked, manhandled, and roughed up.
This isn’t the rock culture I grew up in, and it’s not one I want to be part of.
“Given our song lyrics, none of this should come as a surprise to our fans, but let me make something crystal clear, in case there was any doubt—Tilted Haze doesn’t play music for misogynists, racists, and homophobic pricks.
If we lose fans because we don’t want to see the macho bullshit that took place today at our concerts, then so fucking be it”—he raised his middle finger to the camera—“you can fuck off if you don’t like it. ”
He took a deep breath and sighed it out.
“To the fans who got hurt today, please accept my apology from the bottom of my heart. What you got today was not a Tilted Haze concert. Everyone who bought a ticket to see us today will get a full refund if they so choose. That’s coming from Tilted Haze’s pocket.
Me and West and Liam and Ollie. Not the festival organizers.
Not our label. We’re serious about this.
Message this account or email us on our website with your ticket stub, and my people will get you refunded.
You deserve better. We deserve better. And we hope you give us another chance to give it to you. ”
Remi nodded once to the camera, hoping he was conveying all the sincerity of his heart through his eyes.
He ended the live, and Jillian reached out a hand to take her phone back, but Remi said, “Hold on, I just want to read some of the comments.”
She sighed. “Fine.”
Remi scrolled through the comments that’d popped up during the live but had gone by too fast for him to read.
There were a lot of rude and derogatory remarks that they would need deleted for inflammatory language, but toward the end, there were some positive comments, especially about the refund.
“Can you afford to refund people?” Jillian asked. “We’re only here because Skye said it’d make up for the canceled shows.”
That’d been a last-minute thing, but he didn’t want to disappoint the fans that had come today. “I don’t care. If I go bankrupt by making something right, I really don’t give a fuck.”
“This is Skye’s fault, Remi,” Jillian said. “I know you can’t see that. And look, obviously, I don’t care if you fuck her or other groupies—”
“Yeah,” Remi said, still scrolling through the comments. “Cause I don’t control who you fuck, and you don’t get a say in who I fuck either.”
“But I’m just trying to look out for you,” she continued. “Your band manager? She’s manipulating you and sabotaging you. This should be proof—”
Jillian’s phone pinged. Remi pulled down the notification on instinct. It was for a comment thread about the concert. He tapped it and opened the app. She had hundreds of notifications from an alert she put on the rumor thread over four hours ago.
But if she’d known about the rumor before they went on stage, why hadn’t she mentioned it?
He scrolled to the top and found out why. CrushAllTheSkulls was the account that was logged in on Jillian’s phone. She’d made the throwaway account that started the rumor.
Rage blistered through him as Jillian continued to yammer on about how he couldn’t trust Skye.
He truly didn’t know how he managed to hold it together for the five minutes it took to log in to all of Tilted Haze’s social media accounts that he’d given Jillian access to, change the passwords and email address, and log back out.
He deleted the apps from her phone, and then deleted her phone settings in the cloud for the last few months, just for good measure.
When Remi looked up at her, she snapped her mouth shut mid-sentence. “What?” she asked.
His movements were calm, calculated, as he walked over to a metal table set up next to the tour bus and smashed the phone screen on it. Over and over and over until it shattered.
Jillian screamed in protest.
Remi turned and dropped the phone into her hand. “You’re fired.”
“Excuse me?” she said, sprinting after him as Remi walked toward the tour bus.
“Remi? What the fuck!”
“It was you,” Remi said, his voice calmer than he thought himself capable of. “I saw the comment thread. You sabotaged us. You’re fired. I’ll get someone to pack up your shit from the hotel and send it to you, but you aren’t coming near me or the band again.”
Her jaw opened and closed, flabbergasted. “Remi, I don’t know what you think you saw. It wasn’t—I was looking into it, trying to stop it—”
This was Remi’s fault. He’d only brought Jillian on tour to piss Skye off.
He figured they had an understanding that they were both using each other.
He didn’t care that she was chasing clout or using his fame.
He didn’t care because he thought he couldn’t be manipulated by her if he was using her too. But he was so fucking wrong.
He swung the tour bus door open and bounded up the stairs. Jillian tried to stop him, but he yanked away from her to grab the rest of her clothes and shit that she’d left in the back room.
“Remi! Remi! Stop!”
He didn’t stop. He scooped everything up into his arms and chucked it out the door.
Their tour manager came running up. Remi calmly told him to never let her back on the bus. He nodded and moved to guard the door against her entry.
Liam, Ollie, and Skye appeared from nowhere, running over.
“Remi!” Jillian cried. She clung to his arm. “I’m sorry, okay? I just wanted—”
He didn’t even look at her as he pulled his arm free of her grip. “I don’t care. Don’t fucking touch me again. You’re off the tour.”
Remi sauntered toward Skye, closing the distance between them and wrapping his arms around her. “You were right about everything. Literally everything. I’m so sorry. I need you. I—” He was talking nonsense, just another flood of emotions. He pulled her into a kiss so he didn’t reveal anything else.
He was sure she probably could feel the truth anyway.