30. Phoenix St. Pierre
PHOENIX ST. PIERRE
What the fuck? What the fuck?
We came here for a quick bite after recording a song called “Wired.” Kissing Tom last week hasn’t derailed us.
We finished two more songs without issue, and all I’ve wanted is a repeat of last time, to feel him against me again. To hear the sounds he makes when he comes. To continue proving that acting on our feelings is worth the risk. But I can’t even think about any of that.
Because now my stomach twists uncomfortably, and it feels like someone doused me with ice water.
I’m not seeing a ghost, but I’m definitely hearing one.
Tom faces me, even more concern enveloping his expression. “Is it the chicken fingers?” He pulls my plate and inspects the half-eaten chicken. I don’t know what he’s looking for. Raw chicken? Mold?
His concern almost subdues the panicked inferno coursing through me.
“Do you know this song?” I ask him. When no one uses the old school jukebox, Duke’s on 10th plays the radio.
Tom pauses to listen. “Uhhh…yeah, this is an Oak Bluffs song, right? I think it’s called ‘Somewhere Under an Avalanche.’”
I can’t hide my surprise. “It’s a pop song. I thought it would be beneath you.”
He lifts his shoulders. “It’s everywhere right now. I think it went viral on social media.”
Jesus fucking Christ.
I’m going to be sick.
Tom frowns deeper. “Do you have bad memories attached to this one?”
Music is so powerful that it's deeply understood that just hearing a single song can elicit a complete breakdown for no apparent reason.
Except this song is different, and I can’t seem to find enough air to explain it to Tom.
I swallow hard. “Yeah.” I edge out of the booth. “Can you give me five minutes?”
“Sure. Yeah.” Tom’s worried gaze lingers on me as I leave, and it envelopes me in a way that tries to break through this suffocating feeling. Oxygen is thin. Brittle. I just need to go outside for a second.
When the cool night air hits me, it hardly fills my lungs. Fuck.
I drop into a deep squat, try to inhale, then stand again. My pulse beats hard against my chest, and I dig in my pocket, find my phone and dial a number.
Birdie immediately changes the audio call into a request for video. I accept, and his face pops up on screen. Hair drenched and sweat trickling down his temple. He rubs his forehead with the back of his forearm and pants out of breath.
Before I can say anything, he asks, “What’s wrong?”
“How’d the show go?” I ask him. He must’ve just finished playing. I’ve been keeping up with Nothing Personal’s tour, and they’re at a venue in Nashville tonight.
“Man, you can’t answer with a question. You called me. And you look like you’re about to vomit.” He rotates the camera around to show me a mini-fridge. “What do we think?”
Every shelf is filled with beer. The question distracts me for a second. “Koning Lite.”
“Class.” He grabs the bottle, then swings the fridge shut. I watch him exit the green room and step through a thick metal door into an alleyway. He rotates the camera back to his face. “So are you hugging a toilet right now? Did working with Tom finally cause you gastro problems?”
“It’s not Tom,” I bite back. “Did you know ‘Somewhere Under an Avalanche’ went viral?”
Birdie sucks in air through his teeth in a hiss. “Yeaaaah.” He rubs the edge of his lip next to his hoop piercing. “I would have warned you, man, but I honestly didn’t think you’d stumble on it. You’re not on social media much.”
“It’s playing in this diner, Bird.” My throat wants to close. “A song that released three fucking years ago.”
Birdie tips the bottle to his lips and eyes me. “You’re really shocked it finally got popular? Didn’t we all agree that it was weird it never blew up back then?”
“I thought it was divine intervention. Someone holy looking out for me so I didn’t have to constantly hear this shit on the radio.”
“Sounds like angels are smiting you because you got in bed with the devil.” Birdie smiles into his next sip of beer.
I roll my eyes. I’ve lost count the number of times I told him that I haven’t slept with Tom. But somehow, I’m not exhausted yet, so I go for it again. “I’m not in bed with Tom.”
“It’s been what…” Birdie makes a show of checking his watch. “A week. Since you performed a sexual act on him—”
“And every day you’re making me regret telling you about it.”
“You can’t honestly think I’m supposed to believe you two haven’t gone all the way by now.”
“We’re taking things slow.”
“Slow? You?” He makes a face and swallows a deeper swig of beer.
I rake a harsher hand through my hair. “I didn’t call you to talk about Tom. That song. You really think I’m going to be hearing it everywhere?”
Birdie’s expression sobers, and he licks residual beer off his bottom lip. “Maybe. But you do know Chase is writing music for Madelyne Kip now? Her singles constantly go multi-platinum. So no, you’re not going to be able to evade his songs, man.”
I let out an annoyed breath. “Great.” I seriously don’t even want to talk about this anymore. It just keeps getting worse. “How’s the tour going?” I ask, trying to change the subject.
He shrugs. “Vibes are off. It’s weird not having you here.”
“Yeah, it’s weird for me too.” I shift my weight.
“You should start training for your tour. I puked between ‘Tragic Hold’ and ‘Demolition’ our first night.”
I shake my head. “Riot hasn’t said when our tour will start or even how long it will be. I think they’re waiting to see how the single performs.”
Birdie gives me a look. “As soon as the album is in the can, Riot will be fast-tracking everything. There’s no way they’re not going to put you on the road as soon as possible. Believe me. I’m always right about these things.”
He’s only heard “Nuclear Winter.” I sent him a demo because I wanted his thoughts on it. He texted me five minutes later.
BIRDIE
If you ever think about coming back to Nothing Personal, I will kill you myself.
“That’s if we finish the album. We’re still working on the last few songs, and these might actually take a while. Tom is a perfectionist.”
Birdie scrunches his face. “He’s worse than you?”
“Oh yeah.” I laugh. “I’ve actually learned to let go a little bit working with him.”
“Huh.” Birdie chews his lip and glances over his shoulder. I hear some muffled voices behind him, and he nods to someone off-screen. When he looks back to me, he says, “Steffi wants to grab midnight pancakes.”
Nostalgia weighs heavy on my chest. “Vibes are off?” I raise my brows. “Show must have been good if she’s getting pancakes.” It’s been her celebratory thing after good performances.
“It’s off for me,” Birdie clarifies and takes a deeper swig of beer.
“What are you doing on your free day tomorrow?” I ask. Nothing Personal tours five days on and two days off. I’m assuming our schedule for The Carraways will be the same.
He shrugs and skims his tongue over his front teeth.
I know that look.
I know the silence.
“Bird—”
“It’s just a gig at the Opera. Laverdière is conducting, and Papi and him are good friends. I can’t really bail while Papi is sitting in box seats.”
Shit.
“Which opera?”
“Tristan und Isolde.”
“Fuck, Birdie,” I cringe. “That’s four and a half hours long.”
“Five with intermission,” Birdie corrects me. “At least I like playing this one. Act Two never disappoints.”
The door to the diner opens, and I turn my head to see Tom. “Phoenix, you okay, dude?”
I must have been out here longer than five minutes because concern pleats the skin between his brows.
“Is that Tom?” Birdie’s eyes light up on screen.
“Goodbye, Birdie,” I tell my brother.
“NO! TOM! TOM! TOOOM!” He screams so earsplittingly loud that I have to pull the phone away from my face.
Tom hears my brother and starts walking over. Against better judgment, I don’t end the call. I’ve met Tom’s brothers. He might as well be reintroduced to mine.
“Is that Fake Phoenix?” Tom asks as he lands beside me.
“Hey, Tom Carraway Cobalt,” Birdie wears a massive smirk. “I heard you wanted to suck my dick.”
“Fuck off, Birdie,” I tell him.
Tom rolls his eyes. “Dude, I’m pretty sure you told me to beg you, and I hung up on you. But yeah, I totally wanted to blow you. You got me.”
Birdie is still grinning. “I kid. You can’t want to suck my dick if you’re currently sucking my brother’s.”
“Jesus Christ.” I’m five seconds from hanging up on him, but I’m too hooked by Tom’s lack of response. He’s not telling my brother we’re not blowing each other.
Tom glares at the screen. “Are you sure you’re okay, dude? You’re sweating so much, I think you might be melting. Someone throw a can of water on you?”
Birdie laughs. “You’re calling me a Wicked Witch. Nice. Hey, Phoenix, next time you fuck this one can you rail him extra ha—” I end the call.
“I’m sorry,” I say. “My brother’s life goal is to embarrass the shit out of me. It really doesn’t have much to do with you.”
Tom shakes his head. “I don’t really care about your brother. I’m more concerned about you and why you bolted out here.”
A gust blows through the street. I step closer to Tom, blocking him from being beaten by wind. Despite the mountain of pressure on my chest at having this conversation, I’m not as eager to run away from it.
I want Tom to know.
“My ex from college was a songwriting major at Berklee. He sold that song to Oak Bluffs a few years ago. I never thought I’d hear it again. I hoped I wouldn’t.”
Tom’s eyes darken. “The ‘Tragic Hold’ guy?”
“Yeah. That’s the motherfucker.” I swallow the rise of bile.
“Things must’ve ended really badly with him…if you had such a visceral reaction to his song.” His song. My muscles tense. My breath shortens.
“You could say that.” I slide a hand against the back of my searing neck. “Last New Year’s, on my birthday—”
“Wait, you were born January first?” He jerks back like it’s a shocking factoid. “I feel like I should’ve known this before we…you know.” He glances at my dick for two seconds, then scouts the street like some random stranger is going to hear we hooked up.
He’s so fucking dramatic. No one is even paying attention to us. We might as well be the lampposts.
I blink hard at him. “You didn’t even know RJ did cartwheels for a fucking living, and you’re freaked out that you didn’t know my birthday?”
“I mean, this is a little different.” He gestures between his chest and mine. I open my mouth to respond, but he’s fast to clarify, “You’re my drummer. We work together. I didn’t work with RJ.”
“Right…” My head is spinning. We’ve confessed to having feelings beyond sexual desire, but we haven’t defined what we are. It’s more obvious now. “We’re just bandmates hooking up.”
“Right,” Tom nods, intaking a tighter breath. “Yeah. That’s all we are.”
My whole body is full of tension. I can’t even argue about wanting more when we have a tour ahead of us, and we need to grind and not worry about semantics. Our agreement to be exclusive is enough for me.
I cannot handle Tom fucking another guy right now.
He shoves his cold hands in his jean jacket. “Sorry I cut you off. What were you saying about your ex? On your birthday?”
“Yeah, I ran into him at a New Year’s party. It’d been the first time I’d seen him since we broke up.” My heart hammers harder. “Jesus, I never even told Birdie I ran into Chase.”
“Chase…”
Hearing Tom cast that fucker’s name in the air…
it feels like my stomach falls out of my body.
Tom lifts the hood to his black sweatshirt—the one beneath his jean jacket—over his head, shielding himself from more wind.
He frowns out at the street, then at me.
“Did you two hook up at the party or something?”
I let out a sickened groan. “No. God, no. It’s just every time I talk about Chase, there’s so much anger and disgust, and I can’t rip away from it.
I hate talking about him. I hate saying his name.
Hearing his name.” I suck in a shallow breath.
“And I’m still repulsed at myself that seeing him was the thing that brought me to you.
” The confession sends more bile up my throat.
I might actually fucking vomit. I can barely look at Tom, but I do.
He’s shaking his head in confusion. “I don’t get it.”
“That night I saw Chase was the same night I asked Jeremy to find me a band to play in,” I explain.
“I didn’t want to talk to Chase. Hell, I even made a move to leave the party.
But he made sure to cross paths with me on the way to the door.
Just so he could say, ‘I knew you’d still be a roadie.
’” I swallow hard. “And I know it doesn’t seem like much, but those seven words cut me open so fucking badly that I basically quit Nothing Personal on the spot.
So yeah, man, I wouldn’t be here without him. ”
Tom glares into a harder shake of his head. “You don’t know that, Phoenix. You could have quit down the line for any other reason.”
“No,” I say, resolute. “I wouldn’t have.”
Tom’s shoulders deflate. “Okay, maybe not. But then does it matter why? You’re here now, and that’s what’s important. Not how you got here.”
I want to believe that, but there’s a part of me that will always feel like Chase has a hold on me. My past, my present, my future twisted in his fists.
“Hey,” Tom moves in close and puts a hand on my chest. His touch eases the tension in my muscles. “Just think about ‘Dirty Rise.’ Singing that song on stage. We’re going to get there. And you better hope I never meet this Chase guy because I will fucking fight him.”
I notice his bodyguard lingering in the background. “Are you allowed to get into a fight, nepo baby?”
He follows my gaze. “Try to fight him.”
“Just no biting.” I tap his cheek.
He swats me away, but he’s smiling.
I’m, somehow, smiling too.
This is one of the times I’m glad he has personal security. I don’t want Tom getting hurt for me.