Page 16 of Anthem of Love and Loathing

Left me bleeding

And I still want you

God, I hate you!

I want to break you

I’m gonna break you.

Once I have the skeleton of the song down on paper, and my joint is burned out, I get my guitar and start working on the music. The darkness fades to gray, the sun cracks the horizon, and I barely notice.

I haven’t written like this in... I push that thought down. We’ve been recording and touring and Golden, Bronx, and our new bassist Kodiak keep asking me about new songs for our next album. But I haven’t written a damn thing.

Someone gets up and moves about, and then a door closes hard. Quiet returns while I work through the song a couple more times.

Then curiosity gets the better of me. I put my guitar back in the room and stalk through the quiet suite to Bronx’s door. It’s shut, and I hesitate. I can’t be sure what I’m going to find inside. The two of them naked and entwined in sleep? Another reason to kill my bandmate?

One more betrayal by the traitorous bitch.

“If you’re wondering if the girl he was with is still here, she left,” Kodiak says from the couch where he’s splayed out and watching some TV on mute. He has a beer in his hand despite the early hour.

“She was leaving when I came in.” He turns his keen aqua gaze on me. “I’m assuming not his new girlfriend since she was doing the walk of shame.”

“Not his anything.” I snap.

I stare at the door while I drag in a breath and let it out. Of course she’s gone. But this time I was expecting it. Hoping for it. Prepared to push her until she left. This is what I wanted.

“Sure. Whatever.” Kodiak turns his attention back to the TV. He picks up the remote and starts flipping through the channels before settling on an infomercial. “Gee, I didn’t realize a food chopper could do that.”

Forgetting about Bronx, I go back to work on our next big song. It’s going to be a hit. I can sense it.

I lose track of time as I compose and polish.

“That sounds good.” Bronx stands in my doorway. Arms folded across his chest. “Does it have a name?”

“Break You.” I focus on the strings at my fingers and the words on the page in front of me.

“Figures,” he says. “You haven’t finished a song in two years. Now you write a banger.”

“It’s just a song.” Sure. That’s all it is.

“Sounds like a bit more than that,” he says. “Did you stay up all night working on that?”

“I heard you last night.” The urge to grab him by the collar and headbutt the fucker is almost impossible to ignore. But I wouldn’t want him getting any ideas that it means something about her. Or that I give a damn who he enjoys himself with. “Did you enjoy my leftovers?”

Bronx stays impassive. “Kelsey left.”

“I heard.” I continue to play the new composition, waiting for the moment it becomes muscle memory more than something I must pay attention to. “You shouldn’t have brought her here in the first place.”

“Yes, well…” He feigns interest in the hinges at eye level.

We hang in loaded silence for a few minutes before he comes in and takes a seat. “Want to take me through the song from the top? Let me hear what we’re working with.”

6

Kelsey

Icouldn’t do it. I couldn’t stay.