“News?” I asked, rooting around in my medicine cabinet for pain reliever. The throbbing in my head had started to get worse. My brains were starting to liquefy.
“Yeah, so I was talking to my man, Roberto, who works over at Deep Hill Records,” he began and my ears perked up.
“Deep Hill Records? Are you shitting me? They’re one of the biggest labels out there,” I said, stopping my scavenger hunt in my medicine cabinet as Jose got all of my attention.
“No shit, Sherlock. Deep Hill is the big leagues. Pirate Records is great and all but they’re young. They’re still a starter company. They don’t have a lot in the way of reach or overall capital. Deep Hill, however, could launch your name into the universe. And they’re interested, Cole. Really f**king interested.”
I sat down heavily on the toilet seat and tried to get a breath. I couldn’t quite figure out what Jose was telling me.
“What do you mean they’re interested?” I asked, feeling like a total idiot.
“It means they want to see more from you. Just you. My man is a head A&R dude. He’s been in this industry since the late nineties. And he thinks you have something, Cole. He thinks you could be huge. He wants to talk to you about what Deep Hill could do for you. About working on an album.”
Jose’s words were going in one ear and out the other. I couldn’t grasp what he was telling me. It was all a little too much for me to take in right now.
I felt like death.
My friends had abandoned me.
My band was on the edge of total ruin.
And Jose was saying that a guy at Deep Hill Records thought I could be a star.
I was going to be sick.
“I’m gonna have to call you back,” I whispered, bile building up in the back of my throat.
“We need to talk about this now, Cole. My guy isn’t going to wait around forever. I know you have your sit down with Pirate next week. But you need to think long and hard about what you’re going to go in there and say. And if it were me, I’d say f**k it. Do what you have to do to get out of that contract. I’ve been reading over it and there are stipulations where you could be released without financial penalties. We need to talk about your strategy. Because I want to help you go beyond Generation Rejects. Cole, this is your chance to go all the way, man!”
I started to sweat.
The words terminate your contract and go beyond Generation Rejects buzzed in my ears. My stomach flipped over and I dropped the phone on the cold tile as I leaned over the toilet and retched.
Jose didn’t stay on the line after that. And I didn’t bother to call him back. I couldn’t handle his great ideas for my future right now.
I was so f**king confused.
When I thought it was safe to leave my bathroom, I headed out to my living room and sat down on my couch. I turned on the television and was annoyed to see only static.
“Fucking hell,” I muttered, getting up and going over to mess with the cable behind the TV.
After a few minutes and with no success, I called the cable company. It seemed that my cable had been shut off. Seemed I had forgotten to pay the bill while I was on the road.
Oops.
I threw the remote control on the couch and went into my kitchen. Opening the refrigerator had been a mistake. Something had obviously crawled in there and died. And my stomach went into immediate revolt.
I slammed the door of the fridge closed and debated the intelligence of grabbing my keys and making a run for it.
Because right now, my life was shit.
And I had been doing so well.
I needed to talk to the guys. But I was feeling obstinate. And ornery. And a lot scorned bitch.
I thought back to the first time we played all together at Barton’s. We had been awesome. We had just clicked. There was something that happened between the four of us when we played together.
It was hard to describe and even harder to understand until you experienced it.
Music is what had kept me sane. After my parents kicked me out and I started floundering, it gave me a f**king purpose. It gave me something to get invested in.
And I found in it something to be proud of. I was made to be a lead singer. I lived for being up on that stage and making people want me.
So maybe I had started letting it get to my head a bit. But you tell me one person who could do what I did every single night, who could have the women throwing themselves at them, having people tell them how amazing they were, and not start to feel like maybe they were right. That you are pretty awesome.
And what was wrong with feeling good about yourself?
I had spent most of my life feeling pretty shitty about who I was. I had never been good enough. Even when I broke the school’s scoring record my junior year. Even when I was offered a scholarship. None of it mattered.
Most of the time growing up I had been pretty sure my dad had hated me. I couldn’t remember a single time he had given me a compliment or had said “Good job, Cole.”
That didn’t mean I expected sympathy. I didn’t wallow in my daddy issues and use it as an excuse to do whatever the hell I wanted.
Though it didn’t take a PH.D. to dig down to the root of my psychological issues.
For someone who had never received any positive attention from the one person I had wanted it from, being inundated with it every night, in the form of the crowd, or chicks wanting in my pants, or record labels telling me I was a star in the making, it was pretty damn addictive.
So I had taken the praise and the attention and I had run with it. It had come to define me.
But that didn’t mean I was a bad guy.
Right?
Then why was I sitting here. . . alone?
I was alone.
And that pissed me off. I had worked too damn hard and for too damn long to be in the same dingy apartment I had been living in since I was nineteen. I had thought when the Rejects had started to get some attention, it was my ticket out. My chance to prove everyone wrong.
So why was I still here worse off than I was when I left?
Something needed to change. And I was beginning to think I knew exactly what that thing was.
As if on cue, my phone rang again and if it was Jose again, I’d answer and tell him to make his calls.
Because if I couldn’t get to where I wanted to be doing things the old way, then it was time to try something new. Garrett, Jordan, and Mitch wouldn’t hold me back from anything, ever again.
So I grabbed my phone, full of self-righteous fury.
But it wasn’t Jose.
It was Garrett.
“Hello?” I said, answering it before giving myself time to think about exactly what I was going to say.