The Bad Boys of Summer Anthology(183)

My heart rate accelerates and my breath hitches, that god-awful pain in my gut starting up again. No one notices of course. Except Tammy. She gives me a hard glance and looks slightly ill herself as she scoots away from Walsh. I see her flush and know she’s remembering too. I wonder if she’s as fucking sick and tired of feeling like this as I am.

“I’ve added another stop to your tour,” Dave continues now that Mike has shut up. “You’re going to play Coachella.” Everyone looks at him, unimpressed. “But as headliners, boys. You. Are the show. Last year, attendance was 225,000 people. It beat out Glastonbury by 50k. You’re going where Eddie went first,” he finishes, referencing Eddie Vedder and Pearl Jam, the original Coachella performers. Many fans consider Pearl Jam to be the granddaddies of Lush. I like them fine, but I certainly never modeled my music on them. My music’s just what it is, what I am. And right now, that’s a whole lot of unhappy.

But I rally. “That’s great, man. How the hell did you swing it?”

“Fuckin’ Coachellllaaa!” hollers Colin as he high-fives Mike, who is whooping. “Duuude, you da man!”

Dave rolls his eyes and turns to me and Walsh, since we seem to be the only ones coherent enough to listen. “You’ll be headliners on the east stage the third day. It falls between your gigs in Atlanta and Miami, so you won’t be able to come home that weekend like we’d planned, but I figured it was worth the extra stop to get you in front of that many people.”

“Sounds fine. Thanks a lot for setting it up,” I tell him with as much enthusiasm as I can muster.

Walsh nods in agreement and then goes back to undressing Tammy with his eyes. He’s always been into her, but since he got out of rehab, he’s been so fucking in love with her that, if I didn’t know something of how he feels, I’d find it repulsive. But I realize he can’t help it. I wonder if he’d believe I couldn’t help sleeping with her that night. It just happened—no thought, no master plans. Somehow I doubt that excuse would fly.

And what he’d really never get is it’s because he and Tammy are so damn in love that I slept with her. I’ve watched them for thirteen years, and at my lowest, most desolate point, when my mother passed away and my best friend looked like he might never come back to me, I just wanted what he had with Tammy more than I wanted anything else in this world. Just once I needed to feel what they felt when they were together.

I’ve come to realize though that it wasn’t the girl who made that magic, it was her with Walsh. The combination of the two of them. I didn’t love her, but her with him. I wanted what they have, but I didn’t get it by having her. I just got a gut of pain and self-loathing.

“Tammy?” Dave interrupts the love fest on the sofa. “Did you want to tell the guys about Mel or should I?”

“Oh!” she sits up straighter and bats away Walsh’s roaming hands. “So, you guys remember my little sister, Mel?” Everyone nods obediently. “Well, she’s finishing up her MFA at Seattle College this semester. She’s a photographer.”

“A photographer?” interrupts Mike, scowling.

“Shut it. My girl is talking,” warns Walsh.

“Thanks, honey,” Tammy coos. “So, Dave and I talked, and he’s agreed to let Mel come on tour with us this summer. She’ll do a photo essay of the tour that we can put into digital and print layouts to release at the same time as the new album. We’re going to call it As Lush As It Gets, after the tour title, and we’ll have it available via download as a slide show, a DVD, and a hardback coffee table book. We’ll give download codes for the new single to the first few thousand people who buy either of the electronic formats, so we’ll be using it to push the album from the start.”

“And what’s Mel’s cut of everything?” I ask, not that I really care. We’ve got plenty of money already, but I know I’d be a crappy businessman if I didn’t ask questions like this.

“Twenty percent plus a salary for the summer and all her expenses paid on the tour,” answers Dave.

Everyone else seems fine with the finances. Mike is looking like he’s about to slide down the wall to pass out, and Colin’s thumbing through some guitar magazine that was lying on the coffee table. Walsh is smiling and nodding because, after all, it’s his future sister-in-law. What the hell can he say about it?

“And access?” I ask, getting to the real heart of the issue.

“Unlimited,” Dave responds, his jaw set.

Mike snaps out of his stupor. “What the fuck?”

“Dude, that is such a bad idea,” Colin seconds.

“Dave, we’ve been over this,” I chime in, feeling adrenaline start to course through my veins.

Dave holds up a hand to stop me mid-sentence. “Look, I know you guys don’t want to be ‘that band.’ I understand, and I respect it. I realize everyone is entitled to some privacy, and being ‘fucked up’ as you so frequently put it, Joss, isn’t where you want to make your name. However,”—he stops and looks seriously at each one of us—“you can’t go your whole careers and never give the fans anything but a website and live concerts. That isn’t how this business is run. If you don’t give them some access, the media will make the shit up. They’ll ruin you before you can even get started. The smartest way to handle it is to maintain control over access. Give them their taste, but you’re in control always. By doing this with Tammy’s sister, we can be guaranteed your best interests will be at the forefront. She’s not going to ruin her future brother-in-law’s reputation, gentlemen.”

“What about our reputations?” asks Mike belligerently.

“They’re one and the same,” replies Dave. “Something you all need to remember. You have to realize, Melanie wants to be credible as a photojournalist. If it looks too much like a fluff promo piece no one will be happy. But that doesn’t mean we aren’t in control of what’s going on behind the scenes. She knows the score here, and she’s going to respect the band and its image. This shit is going to launch her career into the stratosphere. She doesn’t want to fuck that up.” Dave ends by looking at me, because, ultimately, it’s my decision. You see, there’s something the outside world may not realize, and it’s not such a pretty thing to say.

I’ve been with Mike and Walsh since grade school. We met Colin when we were seventeen and looking for a bass player. We’ve been through it all together, living out of our cars, eating nothing but popcorn and beans for days on end, my mom’s death, Walsh’s bottoming out and four months in rehab. Girlfriends who came and went, parents who disowned us, and club owners who stole our money. But our deep dark secret is that, while we may have lived with one another and performed together and been friends all these years, we’re not really much of a band. Being a band implies the music is a joint endeavor, the decisions are made together, the effort is universal.

While there are lots of promo pictures showing four badass guys in leather and denim, in the end, Lush isn’t four. Lush is me. I’m the voice, the face, the songwriting, and the brain of this operation, and that’s not being cocky, just goddamned truthful.

Mike has been like acid etching away at my shell bit by bit over the last year. He questions everything I do and challenges me every chance he gets. His envy is eating him alive, and it may eventually eat through the delicate thread that binds the four of us.

But while I fear for Lush, I fear more for myself right now. Anyone can play my music. I can survive the breakup of the band. What I’m not sure I’ll survive is the relentless guilt I feel over Tammy DiLorenzo. She’s sitting next to Walsh in a pair of skin-tight jeans and a cropped t-shirt, and having her there—a constant reminder of my worst life mistake—is like having a flame licking ever closer to my skin, singeing me, charring me a little more each and every day. Some heat tempers you, makes you harder and more impervious to damage, but I’m starting to think that night with Tammy is actually the sort of heat that will reduce me to ashes.

“All right,” I say to Dave. “You win. We’ll give full access, but we sure as hell better be in control of it.”

Dave gives me a quick nod. “Good. I’ll let you guys get to work. I’ll hear the second single next week?”

“Yep, next week,” I say and stand to go in the studio, where I’ll spend the next six hours pouring my heart out into a microphone while the flame burns ever closer.





Chapter Four

Mel



I’m sitting in my studio apartment over Mrs. Thomas’s garage when the phone rings. I look at the caller ID. It’s Tammy. I brace myself before I answer. I’ve never kept anything from her before, but the shitstorm that has blown up since my meeting with Professor Marin is something I simply cannot let Tammy know about. Tens of thousands of dollars and now, no degree. Until a disciplinary committee can be convened, the Dean has changed my grade to an incomplete, thus postponing my graduation. I’m so screwed, and I’m so humiliated.