Part 11 (1/2)

Kent gave him a smile without humor. ”Six,” he said. ”We need at least ten, preferably twelve, by the end of the month. We have to be in the recording studio soon, and then we have the tour over the summer. It's going to be jam-packed so you'd better come up with some good s.h.i.+t.”

Carter looked a little green at the thought, and I didn't blame him. Kent was basically putting the onus of the band's continued success all on his shoulders.

I bit my lip, thinking hard, and almost missed when Kent turned to me. ”Rebecca, I expect you to keep Carter in line while he writes something new.”

I swallowed. ”Carter's a genius at songwriting,” I said. Everyone said so, so it had to be true. ”I'm sure he'll have some good stuff for you guys in no time.”

Sonya snickered at that and even Manny looked dubious.

That worried me. I glanced at Carter and saw him staring at the ground, and if I hadn't known better, I would have sworn that his chin trembled just a little, as though he were about to cry.

I frowned, but I didn't want to draw attention to his clear distress. I still didn't understand the dynamics of the band very well because our only time together was in the rehearsal room. Sonya barely spoke to me and Manny was usually too laid back to give half a s.h.i.+t about whatever was going on around him.

Kent and Carter, however, I had quite a few insights into. At home they barely talked, despite my attempts to coax Carter out of his bedroom, and Kent spent the majority of his time working at the kitchen table. They were possibly the most boring rock brothers anyone could have ever imagined. I spent quite a bit of time surfing the net, trying to figure out ways to help Carter out of his drug and alcohol rut, but a lot of the time curiosity got the best of me and I went searching for information on Kent instead. I'd found some quite disturbing things on the net-not anything Kent had done, because despite looking like a bad boy he was quite well-behaved-but mostly fanfiction about him. Sometimes about him and Carter. Sometimes about him and Carter and me. That was disturbing, and I usually wished I could bleach my brain afterward.

But it was strange. Kent had acted like a stereotypical rocker with me, but now that he had cut off that avenue he seemed to have receded into himself. Or perhaps he had always been that way and I brought out the bad boy in him.

Either way, I had to figure out some way to whip Carter into shape. Without nagging him, that is. Which was going to be hard because I was hardly anymore with it than he was.

”Are we all clear?” Kent said finally. ”We'll be heading to San Diego next week to shoot on location, so I expect everyone to have looked over the script by that point. Try to make an effort this time, people!”

More grumbles, but I was suddenly feeling very ill.

San Diego?

I hadn't spoken to anyone since I'd left. They'd all made it abundantly clear what they'd thought of me, abundantly clear that they believed Jason's version of events over mine, and once I'd started showing up on gossip blogs and in tabloids my email had lit up with former friends trying to get in touch with me. I tried not to open them, but from what I'd seen in the subject lines, they seemed to fall into two camps. One camp wanted to know if I thought I could get them a leg up in the industry. The other camp wanted to let me know they still thought I was a liar and a s.l.u.t and a thief.

I was none of those things. It was messed up. It was Jason who was the liar. It was Jason who was the s.l.u.t. It was Jason who was the thief, who ran up debts in my name and left me to pay for them.

My only crime was being young and stupid. That was, like, zero dollars in fines and zero days in jail. And yet I was the one who had to become a fugitive.

Kent knew I'd fled from San Diego. He didn't know what had happened there, but whatever. Heading back to San Diego made me squirm and want to crawl into a hole and I finally found the courage to stare at Kent, my eyes boring into his skull and willing him to acknowledge my distress, but he didn't even look at me.

The band, seemingly resigned, began their practice. The juju in the room hung heavy, and after about five minutes I left and went back to the car, spending the rest of practice cleaning it out as meticulously as I could without a vacuum cleaner. But you'd be surprised what you can do with your own two hands.

When I drove Carter home after practice, Kent didn't follow us as usual, but there was something different. Carter sat slumped in his seat, staring out the window, but it wasn't his normal rebellious moodiness. I could sense something was different, and I was sure it had something to do with Kent's proclamation that he had to come up with a second hit alb.u.m in the next month.

”Are you okay?” I asked him as I pulled the car into the garage.

Carter turned and flashed me a smile. ”I'm fine,” he said. ”I'm just trying to figure out what kind of theme the next alb.u.m should have.”

I chewed on my lips. ”Can I help you at all?”

He sighed and shook his head. ”You could help by letting me drink a beer. Just one.”

I didn't know what to do. We sat in the garage, staring at each other for a long moment before I sighed. The forced sobriety wasn't doing it. Maybe I could get him to open up to me a bit more if he were more relaxed. I had to figure out some way to help him, even though I knew from experience that it was always a bad idea to try to fix an addict.

So. How do you make an addict see he needs to fix himself? Or is that the same thing?

I was just tired. Tired of fighting Carter, tired of fighting Kent, and tired of dealing with the constant tension in the household. ”Fine,” I said. ”One beer. And I get one too.”

Carter laughed and dropped his jaw in a mockery of shock. ”Oh my, Mrs. Girlfriend, you having a beer? I do declare, my delicate sensibilities may not survive such a sight.”

”Shut up,” I said. ”I used to tend bar. I've seen more liquor flow past me than you could ever drink in your life.”

”That sounds like a challenge.”

I smacked him on the arm. ”One beer,” I said. ”And we are not going out to get it.”

”A crash. He smiled at me and fiddled with the pegs on his guitar.