Death of a Rock Star: A Boy in the Band Novella (5 page)

The aroma of coffee works its way into my consciousness. I open my eyes to see Chris sitting on the edge on the bed watching me. There’s a tray with a pot of coffee and my favourite croissants on the nightstand beside him.

My annoyance is still simmering away from his refusal of me last night. I had a terrible time getting back to sleep. I think I finally dropped off just as it was getting light. Now in my sleep and sex deprived state I’m feeling slightly crazy and a little spiteful.

I glare at Chris with all my might, but he seems unfazed by it.

“What are you doing?” I snap at him.

“I got you breakfast… and then I kind of got caught up admiring the view.” He smiles gently and reaches over to me.

I bat his hand away and pull the covers back up over my naked breasts.

“Don’t.” I spit at him.

“What?”

“Touch me.”

He still seems unrattled by my vitriol, and he’s actually smirking. Bastard.

“Maybe I should say no to you more often. You’re pretty fucking adorable when you pout.”

“Not adorable enough to fuck though?”

I’m being petty and childish I know.

“You really don’t need me to tell you how fuckable you are Sylvie. That should be more than evident from the constant hard-on I have around you.”

He glances down at his crotch; I don’t need to confirm what he’s hinting at. He looks back up arching an eyebrow at me.

“I’m sorry okay. I just didn’t want to be fucking last night with a ghost on my back.” He sighs.

“So what’s so different this morning?”

“Nothing. But I guess my resolve has cracked. Lying next to that beautiful body of yours all night, without being able to lose myself in it has driven me crazy.”

“Well tough shit. You’re not touching it now either. And as for your perma-wood, you’ll have to see to that yourself.”

Chris is the one pouting as I start getting dressed to leave.

“Please stay. Have some coffee.” He pours a cup and holds it out to me.

Bastard. He knows what I’m like with my coffee in the morning, how I can barely function without it. For a moment I waver, but I hunt around for Jamie’s jacket and I slip back into it. I can’t see his boots anywhere.

“What will you do today?” Chris asks.

“Work. What else is there to do?”

I have a raging hangover and the most horrible empty feeling eating me from the inside out. The last thing I really feel like is sitting behind my desk all day, but the alternatives are so much worse.

“Stay here with me. We could watch old movies… I might even let you fuck me, if you’re really desperate.”

Not such a bad alternative, but I will not allow myself to come across as desperate. Ever.

“I’m not desperate.”

“Of course you’re not.” He smirks.

He puts the coffee back down and prowls over to me.

“But what if
I
am.”

I roll my eyes at him, and he grabs me roughly, backing me up against the edge of the bed. He yanks off my jacket and pulls my hair over one shoulder, planting his lips on the flesh he has bared. He grazes me gently with his teeth. It’s an attempt at possession.

I shrug him off.

“You really are the stubbornest creature and you’re so fucking sexy when you’re cross… Let me make things right.”

He drops to his knees in front of me, peeling down my pyjama bottoms, to reveal my lack of underwear. His eyes flash up to mine. I try to be unmoved but my body shivers involuntarily.

He buries his nose in the strip of short hair that goes down between my legs and inhales raggedly.

“Fuck!” I hear him murmur into the apex of my thighs.

The burn that I had to dampen down last night has flared up again and I ache to be touched. To be fucked hard without remorse.

“Oh, go on then,” I sigh, mock begrudgingly, “if you insist.”

I peel off my camisole, and it takes no more than that. Chris dives in like a starving man.

We crash onto the bed and spiral down in a tangle of violent caresses. I pull his hair hard, and he punishes my clit in response. The burn inside me gets more and more intense until I’m gasping for air. As my release starts to slash at me, he pulls away, kneeling up to release himself from his jeans, fisting himself greedily.

“I could come just watching you writhe beneath me.” He growls, teasing my entrance with the hot head of his cock. I grab him hard, angrily and pull him deep inside. He seems to waver for an instant, but then begins to move, tentatively at first as though testing out my resolve.

“Don’t you dare come inside me!” I warn him.

But I urge him on with demanding upward thrusts of my hips and a guttural noise escapes him as he lets naked lust take control.

This is how my body is conditioned to deal with emotional pain. It’s the way I was taught. Even my first sexual encounter was about mitigating and deferring grief. I’m so desperate for relief from it, I don’t even care that we’re not using protection. I’m usually not so remiss, but right now I couldn’t give a fuck. All I care about is chasing that high that blacks out everything in its wake. Am I an addict? Possibly. Do I use sex in a negative or destructive way? Hell no. It’s all that’s keeping me together right now.

The intensity of unprotected sex is delicious and dangerous. It feels lethal like there’s no going back. Chris’s heat and the delicious pull and drag of him inside ignites me almost instantly. My body meets his, hard and fast and frantic. The punishing rhythm sets off a wonderful chain reaction in my body that I know and love, that makes me feel whole. Hours of aching need combust into a fiery release. As I claw and writhe beneath him, the hot collision of my cells transfers to Chris. I feel him still above me, shaking with the effort of trying not to come now in response. He pulls out and almost instantly I feel the hot rush of him, hitting my breasts and stomach, running warm rivulets down my skin.

“Holy shit Sylvie.” He’s still shaking as he leans up over me.

“You realise there’s no way I’m letting you leave this apartment now.”

He grins at me wickedly, all the dirty things he wants to do with me glinting darkly in his eyes.

Finally, we’re on the same page.

I sleep in late, trying to ignore the sickly morning light for as long as possible. I’m lying here trying to do something about the aching morning glory I’ve woken with, trying not to think of
her
as I’m doing it and failing miserably. The doorbell rings and I try to ignore it. Whoever it is will just have to fuck off. Whoever it is decides to hold down the bell until I answer. It completely kills the moment, and I’m cursing like a trooper as I storm downstairs to rip their head off.

I swing the door open and am about to let rip, but I don’t. My annoyance subsides instantly. It’s Darcey.

“Hey there stranger.” She beams at me.

Her hair has undergone a radical transformation since I saw her last. It’s a shocking spectrum of purples and pinks and shaved up the sides. She’s sporting another piercing, in the spot just above her chin.

“Hey, gorgeous.” I smile back. “Cool hawk.”

“Isn’t it? Check this out too.”

She turns to show me her new ink – an intricate series of beautiful steampunk cogs travelling up her neck and onto her scalp where her hair is shaved.

“Very pretty.” I say, knowing the word will piss her off.

“You know nothing about me is pretty, Blakey boy.”

“I know, I know! Mustn’t feminise the butch lesbian.” I tease. She punches me, hard, as if to prove a point and we both laugh. But the fact of the matter is, if you look past the scary makeup, butch hair and all the metal in her face, she is beautiful, in a badass bitch kind of way. She has bigger balls than most lads know. I’d totally fucking do her if I was her type, which obviously I’m not.

“How did you know I was here anyway?” I ask her.

She sighs heavily. The pain in her eyes is a reflection of my own.

“I called you as soon as I heard... kept getting your voicemail, so I called Fran. He told me you were here.”

“He told you to come and check on me.”

She shrugs. “Something like that.”

Seeing my expression darken she adds, “But hey, I’d have come anyway.”

She’s not usually one for physical displays of affection, so I’m taken aback as Darcey barrels into me and squeezes me tight.

“It’s too fucking awful. I can’t bear it.” She whispers.

“I know.” My words are just a breath.

“Hey, let’s go raid your Dad’s cellar.” She says, finally letting me go. It’s barely even midday, but could I give a fuck? No.

“So when did you last speak to him?” Darcey asks.

We’re sprawled out in the games room, knocking back a vintage Bordeaux. It’s our second bottle.

“He left a message on my voicemail Tuesday night. I never called him back. You?”

“I saw him last week. He came to my show, throwing money around like crazy.”

Darcey, Jamie and I all knew each other at art school. Darcey was the only one of us to see it through and actually make a career out of it. She’s one of the rising stars of the Brit Art scene.

“He insisted on offering well over the asking price for everything.” She continues “I told him I didn’t want his money, but he started causing a scene. So in the end I just had to go along with it.”

“How was he?”

“You know… fucked up… but functioning.”

She’s right I do know. First hand.

I think back to the last time I saw Jamie. It was probably about a month ago.

He turned up on my doorstep in Brighton. Said he needed to get away from London for a few days. I was pretty shocked by the state he was in. He looked like a proper fucking junkie – shaved head, clothes hanging off him, hollowed out face. His using had clearly spiralled out of all control. From the timing and trajectory of his highs, it soon became obvious he was speedballing and at a frightening rate. It was like watching him play Russian roulette, pulling the trigger over and over. The spike marks that he clearly didn’t give a shit about me seeing stung like venomous holes in my heart. There was such a horrible inevitability about the way it was playing out. It felt like his suicide was unfolding right there before my eyes, and there was fuck all I could do about it. I tried to coax him out on the subject, but he just closed down on me. It was pointless pushing it. I knew from experience. When you’re in that place, it’s damn near impossible for anyone to get through to you. All that matters is the next hit and the next and the next. Your body, your mind, they just become collateral – a vehicle for escape. As an onlooker all you can be is a safety net, the person there to call an ambulance in the event of a fuck up. Could I have intervened? Could I have said something, done something different? I wanted to be there for him. I wanted not to judge or bully him into leaving.

When he got that call, could I have stopped him running back to her? I don’t fucking know. Maybe. I’ve done nothing but beat myself up about this. I guess hating
her
is a way of not having to face my own demons, my own culpability.

In the periods of speedy lucidity while cresting his coke highs all Jamie could talk about was her. Wanting her, needing her, fucking her, hating her, losing her, the incomparable buzz he got from her. As one fellow addict to another when someone describes the best fucking high they’ve ever had you can’t help but wonder, can’t help but want to try it out too. You get hard just thinking about it. It was like that with the way he glorified her. His words were bullets and fists and caresses. A gun to my head. A needle to my arm. In his crazed, million miles an hour rants, I think Jamie imprinted his insane need for Sylvie Smith on my fucking soul or something.