A treat for you, my Peaches! Updates two days in a row! This is a just a little chapter where Leed and Trace have a meeting of minds, so to speak.
The song, Whatever It Takes, by Imagine Dragons, typifies these two band leaders. They will do whatever it takes to ensure Soundcrush and their Inner Circle thrive.
Enjoy!
Leed
I lay with my head on the front steps of Trace's place looking up a the smoggy sky.
"Sometimes I fucking hate it here," I say lazily. "Adam's got the right idea, you know? The music scene is still crackin' in Nashville, and you can see the goddamn stars."
"Careful, Lion. You sound like a man at risk of losing his edge." Trace casually offers his pipe, but I wave it away.
"Naw," Typically I'm a purist. I don't mix my substances. Drunk is one thing. I can function drunk. Stoned is another. I can work with that even better. Drunk and stoned is just a fucking mess. "Too drunk." A sloppy snicker escapes me. "So drunk I just proposed, man. Me. I asked a girl I haven't even slept with to marry me. For a year. Maybe longer, but maybe not."
"You really went through with that marriage contract nonsense?"
"Yeah. Obviously you were right. Bad idea. She's mad as hell."
A longer hesitation. "You really haven't slept with her yet?"
"Naw. I mean, we've messed around, but she won't take her clothes off and I...I can't...you know? Not if she's not completely comfortable."
"Yeah."
"Goddammn. That was stupid, wasn't it? To ask her to marry me under contract for a year?"
Trace doesn't laugh. "Yeah, but don't feel too bad. Been there. Done that. Bought the misery for both of us. That's how I knowâAshlynn does not need a second season of Fake Housewives of LA."
"It's not the same, though. That's the thing. I love her. I would take care of her in every way. I'd make her happy, not miserable."
Trace lets loose a long, exasperating breath. "Leed, if you need a one year out-clause, you're bullshitting yourself. You know, deep down, you haven't put the time in for that kind of commitment. Also you just don't understand what love means to a woman. Not very many chics could swallow that shit you just fronted. Especially not Ashlynn. Think about it from her perspective for a goddamn minute. She needs security more than any person I know. You telling her you love her enough to marry her but maybe not enough to promise to love her forever? That's probably the scariest, shakiest ground you could have put her on, man. Now she's probably terrified to let herself love you, because what if you're the one for her, but you walk it back in a year?"
As Trace's words sink in, I suddenly feel like I might puke, but it has nothing do with the alcohol. I roll over on my side, moaning.
"If you puke, you're hosing it off," Trace warns.
I moan again and change my mind about Trace's pipe. A smallish hit is all I need to stop this sick feeling. I make a "gimme" hand motion and Trace hands it over. I lay back and wait for the feeling that I might hurl to subside and a little peace to set in.
Finally, I get calm. Calmer than I have been since this afternoon, before I saw the paintings. And with the calm, comes clarity.
"I'm such a dumbass. I made a horrible situation ten times worse. I made her future look as scary as her past."
"Yeah, but you'll fix it," Trace says. "The one thing about Ash is...she's also more forgiving than any person I know."
"She's beautiful, man. Inside and out. I'm so fucking glad you have Kat blinders, because otherwise you would have seen that and treated Ash like she deserves when you were married to her. And you would have turned that fake marriage into something real, and I would be SOL."
Trace laughs. "It was never gonna happen. I know those two Ballard girls inside and out, and I've always known which one is for me. Ash is beautiful like you say, but...I can't live with her. She's too damn sweet and too giving. I couldn't stand up to her kind of love. She gets hurt and makes me feel like an asshole every time I get edgy. Trying to live a life with her...I felt like a watered-down, artificially sweetened version of myself. Kat is tougher. She can take my sharp edges and call me on my bullshit. She makes me feel like the best version of myself, without trying to be something I'm not. She's my perfect fit, man. After it was all said and done, I've finally realized, Ash is more like...Mac. My annoying sister that I love fiercely, but my eyes just don't see her like you see her. Or like Adam sees Mac. She doesn't get my blood pumpin' like that, no matter how beautiful she is, inside or out."
I lie with a hand on my stomach, thinking about what Trace said. It's the first time he's ever been that open about his feelings for both Ash and Kat. Somehow, what he says makes perfect sense and gives me some...closureon the jealousies I have about their marriage. It's so much more simple than I realized. In my mind, Ash is the perfect woman and in Trace's, Kat is that exact same thing.
"Different folks..." I mumble
"Different strokes," Trace finishes.
I look at the artificially lit purple-pink sky for a little longer. "We should get a place in Atlanta. Like a band house. I'm serious about LA losing its shine for me. Don't you miss it? The South? The sweet tea and the sweet life?"
"Not really, but my life in the A wasn't always that sweet. And we need to be in LA. Riley is not wrong, Leed. As much as I wish it was...this gig is not just about the music. It's not the nineties anymore, man. Image is everything. We aren't there yet. The third albumâand maybe even more importantly, how we promote itâwill make or break us. We'll finally arrive as the defining band of Alt Rock. We'll either stick this revival and consolidate the new alt bands coming up under us and change the airwaves back to rock music or we will be an anomalyâan Alt Rock band that had a few top-40 hits and then gets relegated to the alt playlists on music apps and forgotten. Do you want to be forgotten, Leed?"
"Fuck no."
Call it artistic passion, call arrogance, call it vanity. Whatever. All I know is I want to be standing in Matt del Marco's shoes in thirty years.
"Well, then...we gave our sweet life pass to Mac and Adam. If we want to be legends, the rest of us have to stay in the game."
"Fuck. I know. I was just surprised to hear Riley spoutin' that shit. He sounded like Dawes."
"Naw. He's just strategic and honest. And spot on. After you left, Moran showed up. Angelo, I mean. Riley told me that he was very blunt. Mac is the only one of us Moran is feelin' right now, because she's the only one that followed through with our handshake deal when we canceled Europe. He's especially pissed about Bodie and Arabella. We gotta get Bodie back in the real world and get him and Arabella in the club scene where they shine. Adam has to bury the hatchet with Bells and get her in the studio. And you and I...we have to remind this town who the fuck we are. We can't do that from the A. I can do it with Kat on my armâMoran loves that we are social media darlings. But he also said...I need to emphasize Kat's age, and how we are just having fun, because it heightens my popularity with high school girls. You're older but the Sexiest Man Alive. He'd prefer for you to appear single or at least...elusive about your attachments...at least through the next album and tour. He also said your latest slate of endorsement were too 'hippie' and you needed to focus on more mainstream branding."
"That's bullshit, Trace. I'm not gonna endorse shit I don't actually support. And the fake Bodie-Bells thing was supposed to temporary and Bodie did the jobâmaking a splash with her, for months on tour. Mac and Adam are like emerging rock and country royalty now. Everybody is Babycakes-crazy. Their social media following is bigger than ours, people just waiting for the big baby announcement. Okay, you and Kat are pretty much hitting the sweet spotâshowing you off as a dream boyfriend and making high school chics fantasize how it could be them next, but are we really going to let Moran dictate our personal lives? This sounds like 1960 or something. 'Hide the girlfriends so the fangirls will keep screaming.' What about musical integrity? What about your legacy as a del Marco?"
"The bump we got from me being Matt's kid is over. Yeah, we got some new, older fans who checked us out for curiosity and stayed, but that hype has died down. Our fanbase is still forty percent female. They love you and Mac. Love your vibe. They follow you on social media, then they really start to like our music, then they bring us to their boyfriends, who then also realize our sound is killer. I don't make the fucking world spin like that, but that's how it is now. We have to keep our edge with our female fan base. You are our edge, Leed. They like us all, but we ain't no boy band. You are the frontman, the super star. You have to shine."
"Because Moran says so?"
"Because Moran's got a boss, too," Trace sighs. "He told Riley Slade has mentioned you several times. He's wondering why you aren't at the clubs, at the private parties, on the dailies of every gossip site."
"Because I'm a dad who spends most nights with his kid and I want to spend the rest of my time with my sober girlfriend who doesn't need to be confronted with girls doing lines in the bathroom of clubs or bowls of candy at private parties."
"I get it, man. Your shit has changed as much as Mac and Adam's but you've got to make some space to be the Frontman, too. You can do it. You're all about that yin-yang shit. You can find a work-life balance, right? Moran said Slade is very interested in Soundcrush right now. Thinks it's our time to capitalize."
"Slade, taking an interest in us? That's weird," I mutter. Slade is the President of our label. He came on board not too long before we signed, but we don't know much about him. Not even his full name. Everyone just calls him Slade and in our band we always joke that we don't know if it's his first name or last, but now we are too cool to ask anyone. Doesn't matter, we have never even met him.
"He's like a fucking ghost."
"Right? I asked Matt about him, though."
"What did he say?"
"Matt laughed and said he'd been through four Presidents at the label. Never met one that cared much about music, just about business. He said Moran's levelâhead of the music divisionsâis typically where the music dies and we are lucky to have a good VP in Alt-Rock that still has music in his soul. He said keep a good relationship with Moran, and sometimes that means weathering the 'interest' from above."
"Fucking awesome. So some guy we've never met dictates our personal lives now?" I grumble.
"Think of it like thisâif you are gonna do this thing with Ash, you need to introduce her to your world by degrees, anyway. She got no exposure to it when she was with me, obviously. So take her to a club for a little while and stay sober with her, then take her home and hit another one solo. Take her to an Award show, but maybe she needs her sleep more than she needs to be on your arm at the after-parties that go all night. You can make it work. Hell, there's still a lot I want to keep off Kat's radar, too. We can tag team like that, especially as we start to come off hiatus and into award show performance seasons...take our girls out, then tuck 'em in bed and head back out to do a little business. The girls get the fun of our rock star life, and we keep our Rock Star reps. We don't looked completely whipped. We keep the public guessing and the label happy, see?"
I snort. "Good luck sending your HellKat to bed like a little girl."
"Well maybe if Ashlynn was going home, too, she'd be more inclined. See what I'm saying?"
"I feel ya. But you're assuming that I won't lose my mind and act like an asshole everywhere I take her, because right now, I can't imagine taking her to a club. The whole time, I will only be thinking, what if that fucker who is stalking her is here?"
"Fuck," Trace growls. "What did she say? About the paintings?"
"She knows exactly who commissioned them."
"Well, good! That way we can end the motherfucker."
"She won't say who he is."
"She's that afraid of him?"
I sigh. I don't want to betray Ash's confidence, but I feel like all things considered...Trace needs to know the deal. "More ashamed than afraid. What fear she has...she's less afraid of him and more afraid of naming him, than anything. She hasn't told me any details but I would imagine part of her contract was retribution if she revealed him."
"Contract? You mean like an NDA?"
I light a cigarette, needing the steadying influence of the nicotine. "No. Her contract of submission."
"Submission," Trace repeats.
I give Trace a sideways glance. He's not connecting the dots. "You don't look at much porn, do you?"
"What the fuck would I need porn for? I had coeds, then fangirls, now I have Kat," he grins. The grin fades as he takes my meaning, though. "I know what you're getting at, it's just hard to believe. Ashlynn into BDSM shit? She said that? She signed a contract to be a submissive?"
"No...she didn't exactly say that. She said the dude broke her but she wasn't that girl anymore. She said she'd never kneel for him again. She accused me of being like a "Dom" with the whole marriage contract thing. And then, the paintings themselves..."
"Yeah...all the bondage, and her being on her knees...fuck I was hoping they were just sick fantasies...but I guess I suspected. I knew the cuts were real."
"I think everything in the first twelve painting was real. She said the painting were his trophies."
"Goddamn." Trace gestures in irritation for my pack of cigarettes. He pauses. "I can't fucking believe that shit. Ashlynn is the most...innocent girl I've ever known."
"Exactly. Innocent enough to put her life wholly in the hands of someone she thought would take care of her when she couldn't take care of herself. That's what it's about, right? A Sub gives up her will, but the Dom is responsible for taking the utmost care of his submissive?"
"Does that shit in those painting look like care to you?" Trace growls.
"Fuck no. She wasn't into it, but he kept delivering pain without the pleasure. He could call himself whatever he wanted, but he was an abuser."
Trace rubs his face. "She said that?"
Now we are getting into territory I'm not comfortable sharing with Trace. No way am I going to tell him Ash has never been able to come with a guy. "She did claim to know he was an abuser. Not then, she said, but now...after her therapy, I guess. She's said enough in the past to let me know...she's got some issues. She definitely made it plain, she had no good experiences after the first guy."
"Cam."
"Yeah, him."
Trace's angry face lights in the glow of a lighter He takes a long, harsh drag on a fresh cig. He exhales slowly while I join him. "So...what the fuck are we gonna do about this?"
I lay on the step, sucking down my cancer stick, wishing I had another drink, like I'm greedy for my own damn destruction. I don't know how Ash does itâstaying completely sober. She's so strong. It's so fucking hard not to need a little help to cope sometimes. Especially in fucked up times like these.
I wish I could see the heavens and not this interminable smog. Maybe I'd feel like the Universe was helping me figure out which way to go, here.
"Ash swears they had a bad end, she left and he's made no move to contact her since."
"Yeah, that fits with what Dev said."
"Dev?"
"Dev met Ashlynn once. At a house party in Seattle. He was so blitzed and new to the States, he says he doesn't know where he was, who'se place it was. He said she was...kind of...at loose ends. She'd left her phone, her purse, everything and was walking down the road. Said she was bleeding through her dress. She said she had left her boyfriend and couldn't go back...he realized she'd been abused. He bought her the plane ticket to Atlanta, last summer when we were on tour. That must have been the bad end she was talking about."
"Shit. Well that's good, sort of. I think...we need to know who the fuck this guy is...even if we don't take any action."
"Yeah. Maybe Ash is right. Maybe he considered their contract broken and he moved on to another Sub, but just in case she's wrong...just in case his interest is not in trophies but in her...we need to know who the fuck he is."
"Exactly," I take another drag. "So Dev better take some fucking memory supplements and figure out where the fuck he was and every damn body he saw at that party. And Riley needs to put a detective on this...we tell him everything we know, everything Dev remembers, maybe he can even get clues from the paintings. Maybe bribe the damn broker who was Seb's middleman, I don't know."
"Yes, agreed. I'll call Riley in the morning. He's on a red-eye to Atlanta right now."
That is good news. I rub out the butt of my cigarette on the riser of Trace's concrete steps. "Fuck, I hope he finds Bodie and talks to some sense into him. If he doesn't, I'm going down to the A next week, while we are in Nashville. I'll find him, if I have to camp on TJ's couch for a week."
Trace is silent. "TJ...you trust that guy?"
"I don't trust anybody I don't know, but Bodie still considers him a big brother, so that counts for something."
Trace nods. "Okay, Riley on Bodie, with you on back-up if needed. Detective on Ashlynn's abuser. Dev on jogging his damn memory. You on Frontman, also on earning Ash's forgiveness for your massive marriage proposal fuck-up tonight. Adam on making up with Arabella, as soon as Mac delivers. And Mac...well she's on maternity leave as soon as she works our asses off on Moving Day, speaking of which...wheels up to Nashville tomorrow at noon, our hotel in Nashville is booked for the night, Mac and Adam are also there, we're having dinner and an early night because Moving Day starts at the crack of dawn the next day. Good band meeting, man." Trace gives me a fist bump.
"Me and you, brother," I bump him back. I can't help but add, "I noticed you didn't get an assignment. What are you on?"
The bad-ass snickers. "Me? I'm on my girl, in about fifteen minutes, after I tuck yours in and tell her how pathetically sorry you are. Get the fuck on home, man.. I've got cookies and other sweet treats to eat."
I climb to my feet.
"Go eat your damn cookies and let's see what you look like in a few years. I promise you Daddy del Marco ain't on a sugar cookie diet." Matt is more ripped at fifty than he was at twenty five. At his age, that is as much about the kitchen as the gym.
"Lucky for me I'm no Frontman, "Trace grins as he slams his front door in my face.
I stumble home and climb into my cold sheets. Ashlynn's smell has faded from the pillow and I don't sleep easy.
Awww. Do you guys love Leed and Trace's relationship as much as I do? The brotherhood, but also the tension between who is the true leader of the band? Interesting stuff! (At least to me...hehehe)
Next stop, Nashville! We'll be there for more than a chapter for sure. Are you guys looking forward to seeing Madam, with baby Lennon? I miss them...