for the whole weekend unless you want me throwing up on the fans. I’m sorry. I know this puts you in a bind.
Liam: That sucks. We’ll handle it. Get better soon.
Me: Thanks.
I put my phone away and hide again.
~ ~ ~
For five days I’ve been wallowing in misery, pretending to be ill. Brett threatened to come get me after his shift if I didn’t call him back.
My phone rings. It’s Ronni. “Hello?”
“I assume you’re here?”
“Where’s here?”
“Your apartment. I’m downstairs. Will you please buzz me up before I get hacked into tiny pieces and shoved in the sewer?”
“I’ll be right down.”
I look around my place. There are food cartons and soda cans scattered about, but I leave them. I catch a glimpse of myself in the mirror. At least I showered last night, so I don’t look completely hideous. I throw on a pair of yoga pants and a fresh T-shirt and go down.
“We need to talk,” Ronni says, barreling past me. “Which flea-infested domicile is yours?”
“Second floor on the right.”
We go upstairs, and she looks at my open door and then at me. “You leave your door open? Are you trying to get raped and pillaged?”
I try not to think of Crew and all the times he chastised me for the same thing. We go inside.
“Hmm,” she says. “It’s smaller than my shoe closet but not as bad as I pictured.”
“You thought cockroaches would be skittering across the floor? Sorry to disappoint you.”
“You don’t seem sick. Jesus, Brianna, you’re pregnant, aren’t you?”
I can’t help it. I laugh. “God, no.”
“Then why the hell did you force Jeremy to cancel two performances?”
I sit on the couch and look at the wall.
She huffs out a sharp breath. “It’s Crew, isn’t it? You’re having some kind of lovers’ quarrel?”
“It’s not that simple.”
She pulls out a chair from the small dining table, brushes off the seat, and walks it over to the couch, putting it down across from me. “Listen, if it were up to me, Reckless Alibi would be an all-male band. But in the past several months, IRL has invested a lot of time and money into the band, and your absence has put us in an awkward position. If you were to leave, we’d have to find another singer. Not that it would be hard to replace you. There are a thousand girls who could do what you do, but we’d have to re-brand everything with her likeness.” She purses her lips. “When will people listen to me when I say inter-band relationships never work?”
“They can work. It was working, but it’s … complicated.”
“Have you ever been in a relationship that wasn’t?”
“Why are you here?”
She opens her bag and hands me a folder.
“What’s this?”
“Dissolution papers to separate you from the band. As agreed upon in the addendum you signed, if it’s your choice to leave, you walk away with nothing.”
I think of all the songs I wrote that wouldn’t be mine anymore. “I don’t know.”
She stands. “You’d better figure it out. I’m not cancelling any more performances. Crew will sing alone until I find your replacement. You have one week to decide. If you don’t sign the papers or show up for rehearsal by next Monday, IRL will sue you for damages. We spent fifty thousand dollars shooting a music video, Brianna. Not to mention all the social media campaigns, press, album covers … need I go on?”
I swallow hard. “If I sign, I don’t have to pay that?”
“Between you and me, no judge will require you to reimburse us for everything we spent on you, but it doesn’t look like you can afford even a fraction of it. Make your decision by Monday.”
I nod and put the folder on the table.
Ronni goes to the door. “I know about you and Adam Stuart. I did my research on you. Seems like it’s your MO to date the lead singer of a band and then wallow in the drama that ensues.”
“There was no drama with White Poison.”
She chuckles. “Apparently, you haven’t seen the video.”
“What?”
“Don’t you know by now that everything you do is out there? Especially when you’re famous or hanging around with those who are.” She leaves, slamming the door behind her.
I race to my laptop and google my name, but all it shows are pictures of me with Reckless Alibi. I try Adam’s name and White Poison. It takes me twenty minutes, but I finally find it. Somebody recorded me telling off Adam. I notice something in the background and play