Page 102 of Anthem of Love and Loathing

My phone vibrates loudly on the table. I glance at the screen. Sonatina has been messaging me excessively since that video went viral. She wants something. Whatever it is I don’t want to give it to her.

The hell she’s setting foot on this bus. Or anywhere near Kelsey.

“As much as I love having time to myself with her, I’ve got to agree with Bronx,” Kodiak says. “Something happened. What did you do?”

“I told her why we’re stuck with Sonatina.” I close my lyric book. Maybe her time as my muse has run its course. It’s all getting too complicated. Especially now that my stalker is back in action. Sonatina is threatening to join us on tour at some point. And Marco is still a consideration no matter how far away he might be.

We could part in Vancouver. I’ll make sure she has enough money to get herself set up since I’ll be breaking the agreement Bronx told me he made with her, and then we’ll go our separate ways. “I told her Sonatina’s our manager thanks to her thieving from us.”

“What did she say?” Bronx leans forward, his elbows on the table.

“That she didn’t do it.” Standing, I shove my notebook in my back pocket and grab a bottle of Jack to keep me company while I read.

Bronx doesn’t say anything. He presses his palms into the table and stretches back until his shoulders pop. “Well...”

“She’s lying obviously,” I say the words he doesn’t want to say before I stalk into bunk alley.

Except she’s adamant. Her story hasn’t changed. What if she’s not lying?

There’s proof. I’ve seen it. Carmine showed me the discrepancies in the accounts. So why is it that two and two doesn’t seem to equal four like it should?

I tug the curtain back on Golden’s bunk.

The two of them are cozily sitting side by side, his covers over their laps while they craft in their matching face masks. She has her diamond painting and he’s crocheting a small, happy octopus to add to his collection of crocheted creatures displayed on a shelf.

I missed this. The family we were when she was with us. The everyday moments that kept us grounded.

Her.

I can’t let her go. I can’t go back to being without her. Even if the only form we can be together in is as two people who hate and hurt each other.

“What do you need, brother?” Golden pauses mid-loop.

“My damn muse in my bed where she belongs,” I say darkly, knowing that she’s not going to do it. That if I want her there, I’m going to have to force her and that’s not something I’ll do. Not unless she asks me very fucking nicely in advance. Pretty please with a cherry on top.

“Can you tell him that I would rather eat dynamite?” she smiles sweetly at him before she focuses on adding a tiny resin bead to a spot on the canvas.

Golden shrugs apologetically. “She’d rather eat—”

“I heard her,” I snarl at him and yank the curtain back across.

Loosening the cap from the bottle of Jack, I hold the bottle by the neck and spin the base until the contents start to whirl. A third of the bottle has disappeared between my lips by the time I send my bedroom door crashing against the frame.

Picking up her journal from the nightstand, I pick up reading where I left off while I pace and drink. Unable to relax. Unable to ignore the giggles when she and Golden get up to clean off their face masks.

We went to see Paramore tonight. They’re my favorite band. Or they used to be. But L.A. Riot is going to be bigger. I can feel it deep down in the spot where I know things before I know them. Anyway, Riot and I danced and sung our lungs out. By the time we left I had no voice left.

Then my freaking shoe broke and he carried me on his back for blocks while we talked about L.A. Riot’s future. He smelled like weed, leather and that sexy cologne he wears.

I remember that. We’d stopped and gotten tacos. She’d straddled and sat on my lap because there weren’t enough empty chairs at the place we’d stopped. Our conversation had been intense so it made sense to be face-to-face. But I’d had to fight the urge to kiss her and start something I was still telling myself we couldn’t have. Until she'd dropped half the contents of her taco between us.

Perhaps if I’d stopped my attraction to her there, we would still be friends. We could be those people we were.

I flip and scan the following pages.

We went down to the motocross course this morning. The way he rides a motorcycle... it’s just about the hottest thing I have ever seen. But I gave him a run for his money. Maybe. Either that or he let me win.

Then he pretended to stalk me with that damn helmet on, the visor down. There is something about a man in a helmet that screams danger and the wildest ride of your life if you know what I mean.