The Band

Chapter 1

Katie was going to kill me.

I shoved half a stale croissant in my mouth and glared at my mascara-smudged reflection in the hotel bathroom mirror, already thirteen minutes late to the Very Professional Business Meeting that could either save my career or bury it completely. My hair looked like I'd been electrocuted, and the bags under my eyes had bags of their own; a delightful consequence of last night's "one drink to calm my nerves" turning into "seven drinks and a philosophical debate about the death of rock music with a bartender named Chad."

Brilliant preparation for the most important meeting of my life.

I threw on my one good pantsuit, the black one that made me look like I might actually have my shit together, and doused myself in enough Philosophy perfume to mask the lingering scent of cigarettes and poor life choices. The elevator ride to the conference room felt like a descent into hell, complete with little musical interludes and the fluorescent lighting that made everyone look like a corpse.

I rolled into the fifteenth floor conference room just as Katie started her presentation, her perfectly manicured hands gesturing toward a PowerPoint slide that probably contained all the reasons why I was worth the massive risk they were about to take. The three men in identical charcoal suits turned to assess me with the kind of judgment that could shrivel testicles. The air conditioning hummed with disapproval.

"Aria! So glad you could join us!" Katie's smile looked faker than plastic.

"Sorry, traffic was absolutely insane," I lied, slumping into the nearest leather chair, which squeaked like a dying mouse under my weight.

John Pendleton, the label head with silver hair and dead eyes, dismissed me without another glance, as if I were a particularly unimpressive insect that had wandered into his perfectly climate-controlled world.

"Look Katie, I like you," he said, his voice carrying the kind of casual cruelty that came with forty years in the music industry. "And I usually trust your judgment. But I have serious concerns about her." He gestured vaguely in my direction without actually looking at me.

Katie's jaw tightened, a muscle jumping near her ear; her tell when she was fighting not to throttle someone. "You don't know her, John. Not really. She's worth this investment, and more."

"We'll see about that." John leaned back in his chair. "Here's what we're going to do. She opens for The Band on their summer tour. Three months, twenty cities. If she survives that without any major incidents, I'll sign her to a three-album deal."

My stomach dropped through the floor and kept falling until it hit the earth's molten core. Anyone else: some obscure death metal band, a crooning Mormon-faced white boy with an acoustic guitar, hell, even a reunion tour of washed-up boy band members I would have taken without hesitation. But The Band? Three months trapped on a tour bus with Mickey Montgomery?

The same Mickey Montgomery who used to make my heart skip beats in college before he made me skip town entirely.

"I'll give you twenty-four hours to decide." John finally looked at me directly, his gaze carrying the weight of every musician whose dreams he'd crushed over the decades. "I hope we can make this work, Aria."

The moment he and his suit-wearing minions left, Katie's perfectly manicured hand clamped around my arm like a vise.

"I know what you're thinking—"

"For fuck's sake, Aria." Her voice dropped to a whisper that somehow felt louder than shouting. "Corporate meetings aren't your rockstar fantasy time. This isn't the place for your whole 'authentically disheveled artist' routine. I need you to get your shit together, like, yesterday."

Heat flooded my cheeks, the kind of embarrassment that made you want to crawl under the conference table and never emerge. "I know, I just—"

"I believe in you more than any client I've ever had," Katie continued, her grip loosening slightly. "More than the Grammy winners, more than the chart-toppers, more than anyone. But if you blow this tour, I don't know how you come back from it. This industry doesn't give third chances."

The words hit like a physical slap, leaving me breathless. Katie had been with me for four years, had believed in me when every other manager in LA wouldn't return my calls, had fought for me when I was playing dive bars to audiences of twelve drunk college students. If she was saying this was my last shot, it was.

"Wow." My usual boldness evaporated, leaving behind something small and uncertain.

Katie's expression softened slightly, the way it did when she remembered I was more than just another difficult client. "Coffee? You look like you could use about four shots of espresso."

I shook my head, needing to take a nap and a shower to wash this all away.

She left me alone in the conference room with my pounding hangover, the lingering scent of expensive perfume, and the crushing weight of my new summer plans.

**********

"I don't want to do this tour," I announced hours later, sprawled dramatically across the vintage leather couch in Katie's corner office, staring at the ceiling like it might contain answers to all of life's problems.

"Too bad. You're doing it." Katie didn't look up from her laptop, fingers flying across the keyboard with military precision. "I don't care that you hate Mickey Montgomery's perfectly sculpted face. Working adults deal with unpleasant people every single day without having public meltdowns."

"What about the Achilles tour in the fall? They specifically requested me, and their demographic actually aligns with—"

"It's The Band or nothing, Aria. This is it. This is the door, and it's currently open, but it won't stay that way forever."

I knew why they wanted me to prove myself first. One spectacularly disastrous show two years ago at the Liminals still haunted industry gossip like a vengeful ghost; the night I'd ended up throwing my guitar mid-performance at a photographer who'd been taking up-skirt shots of the opening act. Add that to my delightful habit of smoking weed in public, mocking sexist industry executives on Twitter, and that unfortunate incident where I may have accidentally started a small riot at a festival in Austin, and I wasn't exactly what you'd call "brand safe."

An opening slot would prove I was an asset, not a walking liability with a guitar and an attitude problem.

But that meant working with Mickey Montgomery. Mickey, with his stupid perfect cheekbones and his stupid perfect voice and his stupid perfect way of making everyone in a room fall a little bit in love with him without even trying. Mickey and his three bandmates, Axe, Luke and Hunter.

My mind betrayed me, flashing with unwanted memories: college dorm rooms thick with incense and possibility, his warm hands showing me chord progressions on his battered acoustic guitar, the way his face would light up when I'd walk into a practice room. The night he'd kissed me behind the music building, soft and tentative and tasting like cheap beer and promises.

I felt almost physically sick remembering why we weren't friends anymore, how much I had wanted to be more than friends, how completely he'd shattered that possibility.

"Fine." I grabbed the thick stack of contracts Katie dropped in my lap with theatrical resignation. "But I'm not reading forty pages of legal bullshit. My brain doesn't work that way."

"Read every single word, Aria. Carefully. Once we sign this, we can't change anything without going through lawyers and probably sacrificing a goat to the music industry gods."

I forced myself through the dense legal text, my hangover making each paragraph feel like swimming through molasses. Most of it was standard tour stuff: payment schedules, performance requirements, the usual "don't do anything that makes us look bad" clauses. But then one section stopped me cold, like running face-first into a glass door.

"What the hell is this about tour accommodations being under the band leader's direction?" I read the clause three times, hoping it would somehow change.

"All logistics have to be approved by Mickey," Katie said without looking up from her laptop.

"Everything? Like, literally everything?"

"Tour buses, travel routes, catering, stage setup, hotel bookings when the bus isn't enough. The whole production."

"You're kidding me. Please tell me you're kidding."

Katie grimaced, the expression of someone delivering particularly bad news. "I thought you'd hate that part, but they were unwilling to negotiate it out."

The idea of Mickey Montgomery controlling any aspect of my life made me want to break something. "So he decides where I sleep, what I eat, how I travel from city to city?"

"He has absolutely no control over your pay or your performances," Katie said quickly. "Your set list is entirely yours. Your stage time is protected. Worst case scenario, you pay for your own hotels and look like a diva who's too good to slum it with the band."

"Which makes me look like exactly the kind of difficult artist that John is worried about."

"Who cares what you look like? Just deliver amazing performances on time and sober. That's literally all you have to do."

I stared at the contract, its legal language swimming before my hungover eyes. The money was more than I'd made in the last two years combined, high six figures to tolerate one insufferably arrogant asshole for three months. It was enough to pay off my student loans, maybe even put a down payment on a place that didn't have "charming vintage fixtures" (code for "the plumbing hasn't worked since 1987").

"Add a nightly accommodation and food budget to my deal," I said finally.

Katie's fingers paused over her keyboard. "Smart thinking. How much?"

"Enough to stay somewhere with thread counts higher than my credit score and eat something that doesn't come wrapped in plastic."

"I'll push for five hundred a night plus two hundred for meals. Should cover decent hotels in most cities." Katie leaned over and kissed my forehead before standing. "I'll have the revision ready in a few hours."

As she left me alone with the contract and my spiraling thoughts, a plan began forming in my hungover brain. I could hire my own dancers and musicians, bring Sarah and Jake from college, maybe even convince Maya to take a semester off from grad school. Avoid The Band entirely except for the actual performances. Three months of hanging out with people I actually liked while making enough money to secure my future and prove to the industry that I wasn't just another cautionary tale waiting to happen.

I could do this. I could swallow my pride, ignore Mickey's perfectly stupid face, and turn this nightmare scenario into the break I'd been fighting for my entire adult life.

Or at least I could pretend I could until proven otherwise.

But first, I really needed some coffee. And a shower. And possibly an exorcism to get Mickey Montgomery's ghost out of my head.

One crisis at a time.