Page 60 of Before the Encore

Madison couldn’t look at her. Tears threatened her eyelids, and Madison didn’t cry. Especially not in front of other people. She stepped aside and continued forward, her lungs heaving. She needed to get somewhere quiet, to breathe.

Fuck them. Fuck the lot of them.

Spotting heavy metal doors ahead labelled ‘roof access’, she pushed on the bar, relieved that the ‘authorised personnel only’ sign hadn’t set off an alarm. She jogged up the concrete steps and through another door, the wind hitting her straight in the face as she stepped outside onto the roof. The door groaned and clunked shut behind her, and she released a breath. Her chest weighed heavy, the wind whipping tears from her eyes.

Anger deflated into sadness, flooding every cell and pore.

She couldn’t do anything. She couldn’t protect Ruby. She couldn’t even sing—the one thing she was actually good at. They were right. She was a fuck-up. A complete fuck-up.

What was the use in trying to be anything else when everyone knew the truth?

The door thudded against the concrete behind her, but she barely registered it from the swirling noise in her ears. Tears wet her cheeks, and she scrunched her eyes tighter, the sun burning the back of her eyelids orange.

Footsteps echoed, growing closer. Then Kam’s voice came softly. “It’s not what you think.”

Madison wiped her face on her forearm, gritting her teeth, forcing the emotion back into her tear ducts. She huffed. “Yeah, right.”

“Come on, Mads. Emotions are high. Frank shouldn’t have said what he did, but you know he doesn’t mean it.”

“He’s lucky I didn’t break his jaw.”

“We’re a family. That means we fight, but we make up, right?”

Madison opened her eyes, squinting against the cloudless sky. Kam stood in front of her, braids tied back into a ponytail, a low-cut vest revealing her toned biceps—perks of being a drummer. “So, families kick each other when we’re down, and we just live with it?” Madison asked. “Seems a shitty deal to me.”

“You’re just like your father, Madison. A deadbeat, heartless, fuck-up.” Her mum’s voice manifested in her head, filled with spite. “You’ll never escape it. It’s in your blood.”

Kam shook her head. “Of course not. But we’re not going to get on all the time. We’ve come so far in the last few months. I know you’re stressed—we all are—but we need to stick together right now, not push each other away.” She held up her hand as Madison’s lip snarled. “And I’ll be saying the same to Frank, too.”

“Tell him to sleep with one eye open unless he wants his stupid ponytail cut off in the night.”

Kam laughed, muffling it with the back of her hand. Madison gave a small smile before it fell away, replaced with a frown. Traffic rumbled below them; a siren wailed in the distance.

“What did you say about her?” Madison asked, knowing they both knew who she was referring to.

“It was a silly comment.” When Madison’s gaze burned into her, demanding more detail, Kam sighed. “We were wondering how long it would take before you got bored. Not the other way around.”

Madison pressed her lips together. “Right. Nice.”

Kam reached for her arm. “Come on, Mads. I’ve known you a long time. You never sit still; you’re always looking for the next thing. I didn’t realise how much you actually liked her.”

Her pulse jumped. “Who says that I do?”

Kam gave her a playful shove. “You wouldn’t have reacted like this if you didn’t.”

Damn. She looked beyond the city, at all the mismatched rooftops stretching into the distance. A pair of pigeons landed on the roof’s edge, pecking at the brick.

“But have you really thought about it?” Kam continued. “How will it work once tour is over?”

“I don’t know.” Madison lifted her shoulder, unable to look at her. An uncomfortable tickle spread up her neck; she hated talking about this sort of stuff. “People do long distance, don’t they?”

“You’re not normal people. She’s gonna fly back to LA to prepare for her world tour for her new album. We’re gonna finish ours here with hopes of doing the same.” A mischievous spark lit her eyes. “Plus, there’s gonna be a million parties to go to with a million different girls. You really wanna settle down just as you’re coming up?”

She bit her lip. Maybe she had a point. It did seem…wasteful. She enjoyed her single life. Maybe these few months pretending to date Bonnie had wormed into her head. Did she really like her, or had she filled her days usually spent with other women, focusing on the pop princess instead?

She walked towards the roof’s edge, scattering the birds into the sky, and sat, her legs dangling. Silently, Kam came to sit beside her, and they observed the city far below. Cars and buses flowed in a constant stream, the pavements bustling with people.

Madison sighed. She wished she could switch off her feelings. Truthfully, she didn’t know what was going to happen once the tour finished. She wasn’t even sure that Bonnie felt the same. Why would she? It would be easier to pretend nothing happened and go their separate ways. But even the thought of that curdled her stomach.