Death of a Rock Star: A Boy in the Band Novella (4 page)

“I’ll be seeing you…” he adds darkly, before he slinks off into the night to feed the insatiable vices of ‘our kind’.

I shut the door behind Viper, fingering the plastic package tentatively. I’ve got everything I need to get royally fucked up here. All my weaknesses in one illegal care package. I sit down at the kitchen table and lay the gear out in front of me. When I was at Jamie’s earlier all I wanted was to forget, to drop something that would wipe me out. Now I’m not so sure. I’m actually quite enjoying the image of the girl that’s burned in my mind. I’m not sure I want to forget her, I’m not sure I can. Her tumbling waves of long, dark hair. Her beautiful face, somehow edgy and yet classical at the same time. Her careless appearance, like she didn’t give a fuck what anyone thought of her. So fucking sexy it was painful.

I stuff all the gear into my jacket pocket, grab a couple of beers from the fridge and head for my room. I try to watch TV. I try to play the Xbox, but I just need the quietness of my own thoughts. I turn off the light and lay down. I can’t help but wonder if she’s lying down with him. Hoodie Guy. If she’s fucking him. If it was him she was fucking around with when Jamie went over the edge. She wouldn’t be surely, not when his corpse is barely cold. But then who am I to talk? Look at my behaviour today, with Bethan, with the model. I’m just as big a fucking whore as she is. I feel like a crazed animal pacing my cage, wondering what she’s doing and who with.

The only way I can still my thoughts of her and calm this unbearable restlessness inside me – without using – is to play. I left my Taylor in Brighton. My old battered Martin is perched in the corner of the room. It was the first guitar I ever bought. I think it was at least third-hand from a lad at school, but it has a great tone. I haven’t played it in ages. At first the strings clash in an awkward disharmony and I spend a good few minutes tuning them. I rest the wooden body against mine and let myself get lost in the comforting feeling of the music reverberating through me. Purging.

Playing the guitar has always been such a catharsis for me. My fingers run over the fret board, gently brushing the strings, teasing them. Chords fall into place as if by magic, perfectly complimenting the melody that’s pulling at me – at that part of my brain where songs come from. Words and notes fuse and then form like constellations in the dark. Writing is a kind of alchemy. There are no rules, no optimal conditions for it to happen. It’s like chasing a loose train of thought, a feeling. It’s like blindly falling in love.

Is that what’s happening here?

In the dying light

Of this star lit night

There’s nothing but a sad song

To hang on to

I’m losing the fight

To do what’s right

Over something so wrong

So take a breath, walk away

You take my breath

I save my tears

For another day

He’s gone

And now you’re here

Is this our moment

To disappear

But he takes your hand

And I watch you leave

And I lose my mind

Lose the reason to breathe

Fuck this night

And the candle light

That made you shine

Far too bright.

Fuck the songs I’ve sung

And the prayers I’ve prayed

I watch you blaze

then watch you fade

And now you’re gone

I just can’t believe

There’s a reason to breathe

Or to carry on

He’s gone

And you were here

But we missed our moment

To disappear

‘Cause he takes your hand

And I watch you leave

And I lose my mind

Lose the reason to breathe

I watch you leave

I watch you leave

I can’t, I just can’t

Breathe

Breathe

I can’t

Breathe

When songs first come they’re usually pretty embryonic. Random parts of an overheard conversation. You have to fill in the blanks and flesh them out. But sometimes they come fully formed as if you’ve downloaded them straight from the muse. Those songs are usually the killer songs, the ones that are just
right
. This is one of those songs. It feels like a song I’ve always known, like it’s written in my bones.

I don’t want to think too much about where it’s come from. But there it is, maybe the best song I’ve written. I’d like to think it’s a lament for Jamie, but it’s not.

It’s for her.

I jolt awake. Shaken by a nightmare that flees the instant my eyes open. All that’s left is a shimmer of unease that tints the night with my anxiety.

For a moment I’m confused. I feel a body wrapped around mine. Not the embrace of a lover, the hold of a protector. The illusion of safety is a strong one, and my rousing demons sheathe their claws and curl back up.

The steady breath in the back of my neck is like the lap of the ocean, its rise and fall. The gentle beat of life, lulls and reassures – but too briefly.

The hand on my waist tightens and the weight of it is all wrong. The caress of expensive sheets is familiar, but they smell all wrong too. The dissipating sensations of my nightmare begin to gather again and everything seems off and out of kilter.

A fragment of my nightmare comes to the surface. Forces its way out like shrapnel. A needle. A syringe clouding with blood. Blood on my hands. Between my legs. My hand instinctively goes down there to feel for the phantom wetness. A pair of dead eyes stare at me, and my body begins to shake.

“Jamie.” The name mutates on my lips. It becomes a horrible thing.

“Shhh, it’s okay. I’ve got you.” A gentle voice brings me back.

I realise where I am – curled up on Chris Kavanagh’s immense bed, in his riverside apartment. The vast wall of glass beside us looks out onto the Thames. It’s still dark. The city outside seems timeless and distant. All the tiny lights are abstract, like the cold glow of stars. Up here in this gilded penthouse real life seems so very far away.

Chris pulls me deeper into his grip as though trying to absorb the horrors roiling through me. I turn into him. His perfect face looks ravaged by the few hours he’s spent with me tonight. I realise I’m still wearing Jamie’s jacket. No longer wet from the rain, it smells of him again, and I can’t bear it. It contaminated the blissful emptiness of my sleep. I shrug it off and throw it mindlessly across the room.

Chris is fully clothed too, his hoodie, jeans and converse still on. We were both a little worse for wear following our pit stop at Quinn’s. I remember begging him to bring me back here to avoid the ghosts at my place, nestling into him in the back of the cab and then – nothing. He must have carried me up here and crashed out beside me. His dark eyes seem pained as they search my face, his brows heavy and troubled – by guilt? His expression is too much a reflection of my own. I need to blank it all out. Chris is a beautiful man and he’s all the more beautiful with his usually perfectly styled blonde hair sticking up at all angles. I ache to turn his bed-head hair into just-fucked hair. I ache to lose myself in him, my friend with all the wickedest benefits.

“Kiss me.” I whisper.

Even in the faintest light filtering in through the window I see his eyes flick hungrily to my mouth and down to my exposed cleavage. I watch him swallow hard.

“No.” He sighs. “It feels…”

“Wrong? That didn’t stop you when Jamie was alive.” My words come out more spitefully than I intended.

Chris’s eyes cut away from mine.

“Just let me hold you. Okay?”

“No. I want you… to fuck me.”

“No Sylvie.” He’s trying to be resolute. I’ll soon put an end to that.

“Then let
me
fuck
you
.” I demand.

I hate to need anyone or anything, but I need this so badly right now. I need to anaesthetise the only way I know how. I need to stop this horrible bruising feeling that’s blooming in my chest. I’ve always used sex this way. I was schooled by a man who I thought was a God. By the time I realised otherwise, it was too late. I had irrevocably become what I am now. A whore.

I reach for the zipper on Chris’ jeans, but his strong grip intercepts mine. He grabs my hand roughly and presses it firmly to his chest. I feel his heartbeat racing, belying his good intentions.

“I said no.” Chris says, firmer this time.

I feel like a chastised child. But I never have been and never will be obedient – being told no only makes me want something all the more. I don’t think I can remember Chris saying no to me ever. He’s in for a rude awakening.

With my free hand I open his jeans in a deft, well-practised move. Despite his words of refusal, he’s rock hard for me. I feel the length of him straining against his boxers.

I do so like to fuck boys in bands, and Chris Kavanagh is such a prime specimen. The lead singer of Vertigo is a much desired man. I’m living a million girls’ dreams lying here in bed with him. We’ve been fucking off and on for years – more off than on recently, partly because he’s been busy on Vertigo’s latest promo junket, but mostly because of Jamie.

But I want Chris now. I want him to make me forget. Everything and everyone. Every little bit of pain that’s trying to latch itself on inside me.

His cock twitches as I stroke it through the fabric of his underwear. He wants me too. Our last time was about a month ago. It seems like a lifetime ago.

As I make a move to go down on him, Chris grabs me and pulls me back up to his eye level.

His jaw is clenched tight, and he sighs heavily.

“I mean it Sylvie. No.”

I snarl at him in frustration and then pull away to peel off my skimpy camisole. I straddle him, pressing myself roughly against his arousal. He groans. I can feel the need pulsing through him too but he pushes me away.

“For fuck’s sake woman. You’re making it impossible to do the right thing here!” He snarls back at me.

“The right thing would be to give me a mind-blowing fuck when I ask for one. You’re more than capable, and you’re aching to do it.” I cast my eyes down to his sizeable hard-on.

“Too fucking right I am, but I’m not going to go there. Not tonight.”

I throw myself down on the bed dramatically.

“I love your sudden crisis of conscience. Perfect fucking timing!” I huff as turn my back on him and I bury myself in the bedding, insulating myself from his touch.

There’s no way I would ever confess to needing Chris Kavanagh. Not tonight. Not ever. I won’t beg.

I feel cheated. Fucking has that lovely way of filling the void, stilling the panic. Tonight I’ll have to resign myself to the frantic emptiness.