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I straighten my black collar.I’m not sure why, but even when I’m supposed to be dressing to impress it feels right to dress all in black. My fans over the years have never complained, even when we were first starting out, girls were desperate for a piece of the bad boy, so black seemed like a good option. To let them tick that box off their bucket list. When the band got bigger, I didn’t even have to try with girls, they just flocked to us. All of us, even Finch and Bobby for the perfect princes they play now they were just as desperate as I was to get my dick wet.
I push the door open, I’m not really sure what I’m doing here. Preston says I need to turn up at these events, to show my face, put the bad PR behind me that I cost the label literal millions by writing off a car, a whole US tour and nearly my band’s recording contract. ‘Showing Face’ he calls it. I call it sucking dick to the hierarchy, but it was me who fucked up so I can’t exactly complain.
“Titch,” I greet him as he sees me enter the long hall where this stupid function is being held. Titch is short for Titchwell. Tristan Titchwell. Our new manager and he isn’t half the manager Ali was. Apparently, I need a calming older influence without distractions. I mean what am I, a fucking child?
That and she upped and left and still doesn’t answer when I call.
“You look good, Max. Let’s keep it that way, yeah?” he warns me as we enter the fray. I know that’s his not-so-subtle way of telling me to watch my mouth and what I put in it tonight. I fucking know all eyes are on me. I’m a mess, not a fucking idiot.
“Yeah, yeah,” I tell him as I assess the room. I’ve been to enough of these stupid label functions to know exactly how to work this room in my favour. Well, I did back then, before every person in this damn place knew how hard I fell. I feel my throat restrict, my confidence waning. Oh, fuck I don’t know if I can do this.
“Max?” Titch pushes, I’m not sure what the fuck he’s been saying, the walls of the rooms feel constricting, like they are closing in. My throat’s dry. Fuck, I need a drink.
“Best not, mate. You don’t want to be seen drinking here,” he tells me. Oh, fuck did I say that out loud? I’m falling apart quickly. I’m gonna have to drink something, even if I do it in the bathroom like I used to eat my lunch in school before I met Finch. Fuck, now I’m thinking about him.
“Max!” Titch stands in front of me, waving his hand wildly in my face.
“Yes. Yes what?” I demand.
“Snap out of it, man. You just need to parade the room for a bit and then we can go, okay? Can you do that?”
“Yeah, yeah I can do that.” Sounds easy. Easy peazy. I was all up for doing it five fucking minutes ago. I wring my hands together before shoving them in my pockets and looking around again. There’s got to be a hundred people in here—at least. It’s a long, thin room with a bar down one side and some strange band in the corner, they are playing so quietly I can barely hear them. I think that’s the point. I feel flushed, like all one hundred pairs of eyes in the room are looking at me and thinking about how much I fucked up.
“Let’s get you a drink,” Titch says, and my ears pin up.
“Of orange juice,” he assures me.Of course. Don’t let me drink with the big boys, Titch, heaven forbid.We walk past a waitress I would have let make a pass at me only a few months ago, and she looks at me like I’m not even worth the hassle as I take a flute of orange juice from her tray.I’m not, love. Don’t worry.
Titch takes one too, to show willingness I suppose, holding it up to me like it’s the holy grail and he’s achieved some milestone by getting me to drink it. I sip it to appease him, daring my eyes to scan around the room, hoping that the floor will somehow swallow me up as I see the apprehensive smiles on the people who nod my way.
“They want you to fly again, Max,” Titch says.
“What the fuck does that mean?”
“It means do you really think Bruce Grain would take a personal interest in your case considering the millions you’ve cost his company if he didn’t think you were worth the hassle?”
“Yeah maybe.” I shrug.
“I know you don’t want to hear it Max, but they are really keen for you to release some solo stuff. To go solo for at least one tour, to prove Max Baines can be knocked off his pedestal but is strong enough to crawl back to the top.”
“You don’t know Max Baines if you think he’ll make it again. You or Preston Miller.” I sigh as I take another sip of the overly sweet orange juice. Blinking hard because I thought I just saw her, but I think I see Ali everywhere. Even the girls in my local gym look like her most days. I just have to squint a little bit and she’s posed at reception, she’s running on the treadmill, she’s lifting weights. My brain’s so fucking obsessed with Alison Cannock I can pretty much make any girl I want look like her.
“I thought you were supposed to manage the whole band’s wellbeing, not just mine?” I ask Titch. He’s tall, around fifty-ish I suppose, and he looks almost out of place here, talking to me in my all-black ensemble with him in his white shirt tucked into his dad jeans. Does he not realise it’s not 2006 anymore?
“What band, Max?” he asks me quickly. Fuck. What band is there left? He’s right.
“Blank Space?” My voice is small, struggling to admit that my fuck up ruined the best thing to ever happen to me. That band and my boys are my goddamn life. It’s hard to realise I have nothing left.
“Yeah, just think about it. At least go to New York and listen to what Preston has to offer you. You don’t have to do anything you don’t want to, but you can hear what he has to say.”
“I don’t think I’ll get back into the States. I have a conviction for driving under the influence.”
“Yeah, in California State, you also work for one of the most powerful labels in the world. If we want it to happen, it’ll happen, Max,” Titch assures me as he turns around and makes conversation with some other tagger on from the label, and I suppose I do need to think about his offer. It’d kill the boys if they knew what I was doing, but I doubt Finch was thinking about me when he decided to screw my sister, or Bobs when he thought it’d all be okay to hit pause so he could play happy families.
Tom is loyal to the band though; it’d crush him more than the others. Maybe I’ll try and talk to him about it. But how would that conversation even go?
‘Hey Tommy, you know how me, you, and Finch have been friends since we were teenagers? Well now I want to play our songs, just without you…’
Oh fuck.
