Savage Melody--Sample (Book 1 of The Savage Series)

Chapter 4

JB

“Another,” I requested, glancing at the burly bartender who was giving me the eye like he was about to cut my ass off. Jett was already trying to get me to go home, but I wasn’t done. I believe there were another few shots I was good for, even if I woke up the next day with a hangover to beat my last one over two years ago.

After quitting drinking as a hobby back then, I still drank. I was one of those that could have a beer or two every once in a while socially and not let it get out of hand. Tonight wasn’t going to be that kind of night, but it usually always was. I didn’t have an addictive bone in my body.

Well, except in regards to Holland.

Because even now that I was so royally pissed at her—and at Seth—I still wanted her. I just needed to get over the image of seeing her lying under him and then I’d be back on the ledge, trying to get at her any way I could. Why, you might ask? Because when you found your person, you didn’t give them up unless they cheated or tried to kill you. She hadn’t done either, but my heart was still aching like it was trying to sink into my toes.

“Don’t you think you’ve had about enough, J?” Jett asked. Usually, he was the one that brought the levity to any situation, but when it came to my—or anyone else in the band’s—safety, he was a f*****g spoilsport. Get him behind his metallic green lime-mobile and he was a regular Nascar driver. See me with a bottle in my hand or a shot glass and that fucker was on my ass like glitter on some trashy b***h at a nightclub.

“I’m good for a...a few more,” I said, stopping to belch in the middle.

The bartender set another shot in front of me and kept the bottle close. He probably figured I wasn’t joking, and no one else was pounding back Jägermeister like it was water. The s**t was nasty, but it was the first thing I eyed when I sat down at the bar. I figured the grim label matched my psyche and had him pour me three straight shots before the burn in my throat stopped and I was flying high. Or low. Or...whatever.

“Hey, aren’t you—”

“Later, sweetheart,” I said to the blond, bubblegum-colored lipstick-wearing bimbo. She’d been eyeing me for ten minutes without blinking. Or maybe she only blinked when I did. “I’m f*****g busy.”

“J,” Jett said, sighing.

“I’ll be good tomorrow, asshole,” I told him. “I’m a rock star. I’m allowed to be bad every once in a while. It’s practically a f*****g law.”

“Holland left an hour ago,” he told me. “It’s safe to head back to the Batcave now.”

“Not drunk enough for it yet,” I said and tipped back the shot, swallowing it down thickly. “He was going to f**k her right there on the couch. Our couch. Like some teenager who can’t wait to get his d**k wet in some willing virgin p***y. He knew she was mine and he f*****g took her anyway.”

“And she allowed it, JB,” Jett said. I snorted in disgust. I didn’t need him pointing out the obvious. I just needed him to listen as I spewed my anger out on him. It was simple enough. I opened my mouth, and he opened his ears.

Some f*****g friend this douche was.

“I want him gone,” I ground out, shoving away the empty glass and gesturing for another. “Tomorrow at the latest. His ass is a vapor. If he’s not, you can find another f*****g lead singer, because I’m out.”

“You’d break up the band over Holland?” Jett asked, sounding skeptical.

I clenched my jaw. “It’s not the first time I’ve thought about it. Wanted to when Gary told me his harebrained idea about being seen as single on our first big tour. If I’d seen Holland after that and she offered to come back so long as I left the band, I would’ve done it in a heartbeat. This isn’t news, Jett. I’m wrecked over that girl.”

“She never would’ve asked you to quit the band,” Jett responded, wisely for a change. “She worked too hard getting us here in the beginning, and she knows it’s your passion.”

“Maybe it’s not anymore,” I said. The words sounded more bitter than that first shot of Jäger. “Maybe I’m f*****g done with it.”

“I know you. KT knows you. I know you’re not done with the band. Aside from Holland, it’s the only thing that’s driving you.”

I took another shot and slammed the glass down as I swallowed. “After that first big tour, I was going to ask her to marry me,” I mumbled quietly.

“Holland?”

“No, the ghost of Mother Theresa,” I quipped sarcastically. “Who the f**k else? I wasn’t banging any other girl, so why are you acting like you just joined the conversation?”

“I...I’m just surprised is all,” Jett said. “Marriage is...well, it’s a commitment. Comes with a f**k-ton of responsibility. Usually, kids come after marriage. Well, not so much anymore seeing as—”

“Are you done doling out nuggets of wisdom, Dr. Phil? I’d like to go back to tossing back shots.” Jett and KT had the whole commitment-phobia thing down to a science. They could teach lessons on it. The How to Stay Single for Life seminar. Seth seemed to be willing enough to date if he found the right girl, but he was having a f*****g s**t-ton of fun looking for her.

“Sorry, it’s just—I never saw you as settling down, getting married. I figured you’d probably remain unmarried and maybe have a couple kids somewhere down the line. Like that old dude with the clown makeup and the shitty hair.”

“Women want marriage,” I said. “It’s...maybe it’s something in their DNA. Matrimonially-inclined. Most want kids, too, from what I’ve seen, but they want a marriage more. It grounds them, gives them roots. No one wants a ‘maybe forever’. It builds uncertainly. I sure don’t want that, and wouldn’t have wanted Holland to feel that way either.”

Jett was quiet for a bit, possibly mulling over what I said. What he took from it was anyone’s guess, but come morning I’m sure he would’ve forgotten all about my marriage monologue. Or he’d crack a joke about it and call me Mr. Cleaver or some s**t. He was good for finding the humor in things, but a laugh wasn’t what I wanted out of this whole f*****g debacle.

“You’re not kicking Seth out of the band,” he finally said as he drained the rest of his beer. “He’s a great drummer, and I don’t want to have to look for another one. The dudes got chops, and we won’t find someone as well-suited to us. He makes us look good.”

“He can stay,” I mumbled under my breath reluctantly. “But he better stay the f**k away from me and Holland. He so much as looks at her when she’s even talking and I’m snapping his neck so hard he’ll be watching the hole he shits out of instead of the one he pisses from.”

Jett nodded, gesturing for the check. “C’mon, man,” he said. “We got that f*****g interview on late-night tomorrow. You’re gonna be hungover in the morning, but maybe by the time the show starts you won’t look like s**t dipped in puke.”

I followed him out of the bar after putting down a large bill and handing my car keys over to him. I was drunk, but I wasn’t f*****g stupid.

Holland

Holland: JB, answer your phone.

It was 2 AM and I hadn’t slept. JB had ignored every single one of my texts since 10:30 PM when I got home. I know he ignored them, because it showed he hadn’t even opened them up to read.

I was the fixer. I wasn’t supposed to be f*****g things up worse. I should’ve thought of that before saying yes to Seth, but...he was hot and I was horny. And I was angry. Did that mean I was horngry?

Never listen to your v****a ladies. That b***h will get you diseased or knocked up if you do. No one needs that kind of p***y peer pressure.

I knocked back a couple of melatonin about an hour ago, but apparently, I have some sort of immunity to it. Maybe I should have myself tested as some medical marvel. They could do studies on me. I had two melatonin and a couple of glasses of wine, and I was still as amped up as a crackhead at a rave at midnight on New Year’s Eve. Or maybe that was the same thing, because those lunatics all milling around Times Square have got to be some sort of crazy that hasn’t been even tapped into yet. If we could turn ‘crazy’ into a renewable energy source, the US would shine brighter than the f*****g sun.

Maybe downers have the opposite effect on me. Or I could be a cure for AIDS or cancer. Maybe if they shot me up with enough diseases, my immune system would ninja-kick all their tiny microbial asses into oblivion. I could be famous. They’d name a holiday after me. Couldn’t call it Holland day—that would sound too European. They could call it...Chastaine Day. It could go down as the first International Holiday. International Chastaine Day. I liked the sound of it.

But this was what happened when I didn’t get enough sleep and decided to drink wine after a very long and exhausting day. My mind wandered onto the fantastical and extraordinary. It was right up there with d**k Aid and the GoFundMe account I wanted to use to make over-siliconized celebrities normal again. Like reverse plastic surgery. I mean, we have to watch them on TV right? I want the old When Harry Met Sally Meg Ryan back, not the weird puppet they have parading around now with the strange lips and eyes that look like they’ve been shoved too close together. It makes Uma Thurman’s weird fish-face look passé.

And don’t get me started on Sandra Bullock. She’s started to resemble a white Michael Jackson.

White Michael Jackson. Okay, that just sounded weird.

Back to Chastaine Day. What would we have? There would be a huge dinner. Yes. One where they thanked the lovely and vibrant Holland Chastaine who used her temple of a body as a guinea pig so that others may live a disease-free and happy life. Sure, her veins collapsed after the thousandth time they tried to inject the cure for hepatitis into her, but that happened to junkies everywhere. Just find a new vein and get digging.

I needed to sleep. But sleep was the last thing that was looking for me. Maybe if I downed a couple of shots of whiskey I still had hanging around, it would put me right to bed.

I grabbed the bottle and sniffed. What did bad whiskey smell like? Can whiskey even go bad?

Google. You are my b***h tonight.

So far, I had googled how to instate a holiday—no luck there, folks, so Chastaine Day is cancelled for the foreseeable future—and how to tell if you are clinically insane. I didn’t understand a bit of it, which makes me think I might not be. Anyone who read the DSM IV books needed to have a screw or two loose. It was so boring and analytical. Now I needed to find out if my whiskey was safe to drink.

Thanks to Google, I drained the bottle and waited for drowsiness to hit me. The bottle was now in with the recyclables, and I was pretty sure I last emptied it sometime in 2017. I was too lazy to recycle, and too busy to give a s**t. Those Coors Light cans in there certainly gave me pause. I don’t usually drink beer, and especially not piss-water like Coors. Even smelling it made my stomach turn over in disgust.

I climbed into my bed wearing a tank top and panties, the whiskey-sweats the only symptom that I had of actually finishing that stupid bottle. Was alcohol like medicine? Did it expire or become weaker after time? If that was the case, I could finish off that half-bottle of Patrón I’d had since Clinton was president. It would go down as smooth as tap water.

My mind was reeling, and the only things keeping me awake were thoughts of JB. I knew they had some sort of late-night talk show thing going on the next night, so I really needed the sleep. I needed to be on my A-game if I wanted everything to go right.

I decided to click on YouTube and watch previous talk shows they did in the past. I knew I had never watched them before—avoided them, in fact, but if I wanted to get a feel for how they behaved on television, I should get an idea of what I was working with and who the weak link was. There was always one. The dumbest, the raunchiest, the one who didn’t f*****g think before he spoke. There was one in every group. It was practically law withing the biz.

I surfed through two Jimmy Kimmels and a Seth Meyers. The name pained me before I shut it off and turned on the most recent interview with Jimmy Fallon.

‘Why would you say you never write love songs?’ Fallon asked. It was one of the questions that had been tweeted in from the public.

‘I wouldn’t say I never wrote one,’ JB spoke slowly. ‘I’ve written about twenty, and never thought they were good enough to be on an album.’

‘And why’s that?’ Fallon leaned forward to listen to his response.

’None of them felt real enough to me,’ JB claimed. ‘I guess it’s because you have to really feel it to put it into words.’

‘So, you’re saying that you’ve never been in love?’

JB smiled before clearing his throat. ‘I wouldn’t say that either. I could write a million songs about heartbreak and a billion on anger. To write a love song, I’d have to be feeling that love fully to get the words on paper. Otherwise, they sound fake. Hackneyed even.’

The interview went on for a few more minutes before they got up and sang a new song that had come out prior to the release of their last album.

I don’t remember how the end of the song went. I only remember hearing his words over and over again.

And not the ones in the song.

§§§

It turned out that the audiences loved Savage Melody interviews. My only notes on what to say would have been to Seth, who’d never done an interview like this, but I was steering clear of him because of what KT had told me the night before and the fact that Jett had given me the heads up that Seth was two seconds away from being ousted from the band. All we needed was another newsworthy snippet about bad-boy rockers to set the music world aflame. In turn, I’d told Jett to keep an eye on JB and make sure he was charming the audience’s panties off and not pissing on a pile of s**t.

Well, not in exactly those words. And not in an environment where anyone could hear, anyway.

JB had never responded to the numerous texts I sent, and he did his best not to look at me. I was hoping it was because he had turned off his phone or had thrown it into the Pacific Ocean in a fit of anti-technology angst, but he had it in his back pocket, so I believed my theories to be unfounded.

I was tempted to send another one while he was nearby to see if it would give him a notification, or at least vibrate his left butt cheek, but I knew he probably had the ringer off already since he was heading onstage in...

Hmm...less than ten minutes.

They were going to go to a commercial before that, sing a song from their latest album, and then they’d be interviewed by Conan O’Brien. I thought the host was pretty ridiculous, but for some damn reason, people still watched that pasty-faced asshat.

Go figure.

After a moment during the commercial break where the guys made sure their instruments were still tuned, Channing texted my cell, wondering if they had gone on yet.

Holland: Not yet. And why aren’t you watching?

Big Boss: I can’t watch. Gives me ulcers wondering what my artists are going to say. My doc would have a damned ulcer himself if I told him I was watching.

Holland: Then maybe you should go into a different line of work. I hear telemarketing is making a comeback.

Big Boss: I can’t sell s**t unless I smile at people. My voice quakes if I’m not up in someone’s face flashing the old pearly whites.

Holland: Go to bed, old man. It’s past your bedtime anyway and you won’t make it in time for the early bird special at your local café and get your egg-whites only scrambled eggs and whole-wheat toast with marmalade.

Big Boss: Quiet, Holland. I’m not even old enough to be your father.

Holland: And yet you act like you’re twice his age. Goodnight, Chan.

Big Boss: Keep ’em in line, kid.

Their song was almost over, and I hadn’t heard a damned word of it. It could’ve been about baby sea otters—I mean, who doesn’t love baby sea otters?—and I wouldn’t have been able to tell the difference. The audience seemed to love it, and the guys filed over to get comfy on Bobo the Dancing Clown’s couch for a wee bit of a chat.

Seriously, the guy was like the ghost of Pennywise the Clown. I hated clowns.

The questions were the same ones they always got on talk shows. Where they got their inspiration, how much they were looking forward to their next tour in a few months, who wrote what and if any of them had girlfriends. They all replied in the negative to that, with the exception of JB, who kept silent.

Conan, as old, doddering and feeble as he was, didn’t miss it, and asked him about his silence.

“There is a girl...”

The audience catcalled, and one deluded female called out that she loved him. He smiled but didn’t turn his head away from Conan.

“I’ve been in love with her for what seems like forever,” JB said.

“So, you’re taken? I can practically hear hearts across the nation breaking,” Conan quipped, sitting back in his chair.

“Not taken,” JB said, leaning forward. “You see, I f—screwed up a few years back. I tried to reach out to her since then, but she didn’t want to hear it.”

“I don’t remember any word ever of you having a girlfriend,” Conan pointed out.

“It was a secret,” JB explained. “We were involved romantically and professionally and had to keep it on the downlow. I wish we hadn’t. Then maybe I wouldn’t have screwed up so bad and lost her.”

“And what would you say to this girl if she was watching right now?” Conan asked, leaning into JB as well.

“I’d tell her I love her, that I’ve always loved her,” JB said quietly. The audience was silent. It couldn’t have been more hushed if it was only me in the room. “I’d tell her that I want to try again and beg for her forgiveness. I’d tell her that if she’d take me back, I’d erase those three years we were apart.”

I hated Conan O’Brien, but when he smiled that happy little leprechaun pot-of-gold grin of his, I had to admit, he looked like he was on our side all the way.