Being all alone, holed up in my house, didn’t seem to help much either. I just wanted Ari here with me. I wanted to get a New Year’s kiss I’d remember. But if Ari didn’t want me around, I wasn’t sure how much more of my antics would change her mind. If it came down to that, I’d have to resign myself to move on.

Hollis hadn’t been the only one pissed that I’d walked out of the show. The guys had returned from the city early afternoon on New Year’s Day, and they had promptly gone about ignoring my existence every time I tried to talk to them. I’d f**king wanted to be alone to think, and now, they were giving me all the space I needed.

I wandered into the garage, and everyone seemed to have calmed down by the time regular band rehearsal was supposed to start. They were seated on the couches. McAvoy had his laptop open. He was the tech-savvy one of the bunch, and we generally just left him alone when he got in the zone. Miller looked up when I walked in, but Vin didn’t even spare me a glance. He must really be pissed.

I took a seat next to McAvoy. I decided to take a direct approach. “Sorry about last night.”

“What the f**k happened?” Vin asked. He looked like he’d doped up on steroids this morning, and he was even more of a loose cannon. “You just f**king left us out there. We had three more songs to go, and you ditched us! What the f**king f**k kind of band member ditches his band onstage with no motherfucking warning?”

“I know. I should have told you guys.”

“You f**king think? You humiliated us out there!”

“I didn’t humiliate you,” I argued. “We played the majority of our set. No one even knew the difference.”

“Hollis knew the difference,” Miller cut in. “He was pretty pissed.”

“Fuck Hollis,” I said with a shake of my head. “I’m so tired of these label people thinking they can mold us into these perfect shapes. They can’t define us by dangling a contract in front of our eyes.”

Vin cursed under his breath, but Miller was the one who spoke up, “Hollis isn’t trying to fit us into a certain mold. He’s been pretty lenient as far as I’m concerned, and I like him. Now, after that performance and your argument, we might not get signed.”

“Good. I don’t want to get signed,” I said without thinking.

The silence in the room was deafening. Even McAvoy stopped clicking away at his computer to look up at me. All of the guys stared at me with a range of shocked expressions. I’d never voiced that thought out loud to anyone before. I hadn’t even really thought about it much until recently. After the Frank Boseley incident, I’d been feeling more and more constrained by the pressure of fitting into a traditional record mold. Then, with the added fear of losing Ari, it had only amped up that feeling.

“You what?” Miller asked.

“I don’t want to get signed.”

“Since when?”

“This whole experience is ruining me for wanting to sign with anyone.”

“Is this about Ari?” Miller asked, just laying it out there.

“Oh, come on, man. Just forget that girl,” Vin complained.

“I’m not forgetting about her!” I yelled back at Vin. “Can we just drop the subject?”

“You just dropped a bomb on us, and you want to just walk away from that?” Miller asked in disbelief.

“Guys,” McAvoy said, speaking up, “you might want to shut the f**k up and look at this.”

“At what?” I asked. I leaned over his computer and tried to make out what I was looking at. It just looked like a spreadsheet with random words and numbers on it.

“Well, we sold about ten-thousand more copies of our ‘Life Raft’ demo than we’ve sold of every other song combined.”

“What? Since when?”

“Since…today,” McAvoy said.

I looked at him, stunned. “How is that possible?”

“I can only assume it’s because of the show last night.”

My mind ran away with me. Ten-thousand more copies. Of course it had to be that f**king song. It had to be that one. I didn’t ever want to sing that song again at this point, but it was the one that over ten-thousand people had purchased within twenty-four hours. Fuck!

Chapter 46: Aribel

Aaron finally coaxed me out of bed a couple of days later. He insisted I come out with him. The last thing I wanted to do was party.

I’d been sulking around the house exactly like the lovesick puppy I was. My mother had seemed concerned and tried to get me to see a doctor, but I wasn’t sick. I’d just shooed her away and closed the door. She’d never seen behavior like this from me before, so she was rightfully worried. There wasn’t much she could do at this point though.

Even if I didn’t want to go out with Aaron, I was kind of ready to get out of the house. Sitting around in my room all day meant that I thought about Grant all day. I figured it might be good to get him off my mind.

Around ten o’clock, we arrived at Le Petit Parlor, a ritzy French bar that catered to an elite crowd. I’d been here a couple of times before but mostly with high school friends, who I preferred not to see tonight. The room was extremely dark with red velvet booths that were dimly lit and a small dance floor in an adjoining room. Unlike the Princeton crowd I was used to, the people here were drinking scotch rather than beer and Grey Goose or champagne rather than hunch punch. I’d dressed the part in a fitted knee-length dress, matching my eyes, and pumps.

Aaron didn’t hesitate when we entered, and he walked us right over to a booth where six of his friends sat around a bottle of scotch. He wrapped an arm around a girl sitting with them. She was clearly not Sarah, the girlfriend he’d brought with him to the Christmas party. I frowned, unsure what to make of that.

The guys were all smoking cigars, and my nose crinkled at the smell. Aaron made no introductions as I’d known everyone, aside from the girl, since grade school.

“I’m going to get a drink,” I said after a minute.

They already had scotch, but I wasn’t going to drink that. I wouldn’t get carded here anyway.

“All right,” Aaron said with a nod.

I made my way to the bar. The bartender smiled at me and passed over a flute of champagne without me asking for it. I had wanted something stronger, but this would do. Maybe if I had four or five more, they would numb the pain or something. I handed him my credit card and told him to leave it open.