I swallowed hard, glad he wasn’t looking at me, and to take my mind off the way his strong hands deftly stripped his water bottle naked, I said, “How come you were hiding outside?”
“I wasn’t hiding.”
Heaving an impatient sigh, I jabbed a finger into Drew’s side. He almost fell off his stool when he jumped away. “I came a long way to be here tonight. The least you can do is answer me in more than monosyllabic grunts!”
A smile tugged at the corners of his lips and the perma-wrinkle on his forehead disappeared. “Sorry. I had words with Derek and he pissed me off.”
“He’s here?”
“He’s here. He wants to make sure we keep this feud going. He says we can’t talk in public, and when we’re playing, we have to ignore each other.”
With Drew on drums and Jason on the mic, they never engaged much while on stage anyway, so that wouldn’t be a problem. Having to avoid public conversation was asking a lot since they usually spe
nt so much time together, though.
I opened my mouth to speak but Drew held up his hand. “Yeah, yeah. Before you say ‘I told you so,’… don’t.”
“I wasn’t-”
“Ellie. I know. You think we made a mistake and we never should have started this. I get it.”
He turned away. One of Drew’s best skills was shutting down from conversations he didn’t want to have. I visualised one of those signs that hang on shop doors saying, We are now closed for business. His eyes seemed to do the same thing. Go away, come back tomorrow.
Placing my bottle of water on the bar, I said, “I’ll be right back.”
I hopped down from the stool and headed to the ladies room. Leaning against one of the clean white sinks, I let out a frustrated sigh. Drew’s refusal to open up didn’t come as a shock. He’d always been that way. His “keep quiet and hope the bad stuff goes away” approach had never served him well, though. There was only so long he could hold years’ worth of pent up frustration inside before he exploded, cascading into a shower of rage and pain that threatened to drown us all.
It never used to hurt; Drew’s unwillingness to talk about his problems. Another new, unfortunate side effect of my feelings. Another indication I felt way more for him than I allowed myself to admit, but I had to keep it inside my head.
Neither of you need the complication of a relationship right now. Get. Over. It.
I cupped my hands under the cold water tap and ducked forward to splash my warm cheeks. The great thing about alternative clubs was that nobody took much notice of appearances anyway, so it didn’t matter that I now had a make-up free face. I grabbed some paper towels to dry off, and then went back out to the bar.
As I passed the open front door of the club, the same group of people still waited outside crowded together, shivering. Three girls dressed in skinny jeans and flimsy tops, and two equally under-dressed lads jumped up and down to keep warm. They’d obviously been out there a while in the below freezing temperature and biting wind.
Hardcore fans.
When I rounded the corner, the band was preparing for a sound check, and instead of sitting down to listen, I stepped up onto the stage with them.
“Guys, there are some people outside, freezing their genitalia off. Can’t we let them in early?”
Drew shrugged. “I don’t mind if they come in. You might want to check with the owner.”
His gaze held mine, full of apology. I smiled, but before it fully connected with him, a pair of hands gripped my waist, causing me to spin around.
“Ellie, Ellie, Ellie! Lovely to see you!”
The feeling is not mutual. At all.
“Hi Derek.” I faked a grin. “I wondered if we could let the fans come in early since it’s colder than a penguin’s arse outside.”
“Absolutely. Anything for my favourite groupie!”
Urgh. He’d called me a groupie since he first met me four years ago. Twenty years old and shy, I hid behind Jason a lot back then. I’d explained numerous times I was a lifelong friend, not some random hanger-on, but he still continued to slap the label on me.
Derek scurried away to tend to my request and I stepped down from the stage and stood far back near the technicians, bracing myself for the explosion of noise. The sheer volume of a rock band playing to an almost empty room is enough to make a person’s internal organs vibrate; I’d quickly learned not to stand too close to the stage or the speakers – oh, and to always have ear plugs. At my first sound check I’d felt as though my insides had been jolted with several thousand volts of electricity, and I’d spent the rest of the evening backstage trying to shake the ringing from my ears. Three days later, the ring decreased to a dull hum and vanished completely somewhere around day five.
Drew sat at his drum kit, and the other guys took their places too. In turn, they checked their sound levels and asked for adjustments when necessary.