Page 18 of Finding Storm

I drive up to Republique twenty minutes later and get lucky, finding a parking spot that just opened close by.

I slide my baby into it and turn off the engine, leaving the music playing—Eminem’s “The Monster.”

I glance at the clock on the dash.

I’m a few minutes late.

How very rock ’n’ roll of me.

Needing a nicotine fix to get me through the next hour, I light a cigarette up and inhale deeply, resting my head back on the headrest. I lower my window down a touch and blow the smoke outside.

Sometimes, I think life would be easier if I wasn’t a musician. Well, I don’t think it. I know it.

If I lived my life away from the music business, worked a nine-to-five job, life would be piss easy.

I close my eyes and imagine it.

No more press. No more social media. No one saying I’m not good enough.

Sounds like fucking heaven.

But then there’d be no more music. No more Slater Raze.

No more days and nights in the studio. No more writing sessions with the boys.

No more shows.

I know I feel off at the moment, but I also know without a doubt that I would miss being onstage. I would miss the sounds of thousands of people singing along to the words of the songs that I wrote.

There’s nothing like that feeling that comes from hearing people sing your words back to you.

Sometimes, when something is embedded so deeply inside that it makes you who you are, you can’t give it up, no matter the damage it does to you.

I do what I love; I pay the price. I give it up; I pay the price.

Sounds like a fucking winner to me.

Jake once said to me, “You wanna live your life the way you do, then you gotta listen to people’s criticism. But that doesn’t mean you have to hear it.”

And I try not to hear it. I do. But it’s hard.

At times, it’s all I hear.

Sighing, I put my cigarette out, dumping it in the empty coffee cup I left in here yesterday.

Leaving my car, I take the cup with me and drop it in a nearby trash can.

Okay, let’s get this shit done, and then I get back in the studio, where I belong.

I walk over to the restaurant, push open the door, and walk inside.

I’ve been here once before, years ago though.

I walk over to the hostess station.

The woman behind it looks up at me.

I’m hit with a moment of recognition.