Title: Ruin Porn
Authors: S.A. McAuley and SJD Peterson
Series: Resonator #1 (can be read standalone)
Category: MM, Contemporary, Musicians
Publisher: Dreamspinner Press
Release Date: Available Now
There is underlying beauty in destruction….
Miah Thade, Finn Reese, and Ritchie Meyer are Resonator, an indie rock band with an edge—best friends turned rock stars, known as the Detroit 3. When Evin Rene appears in their life, none of them can deny he belongs with Rez.
They may have named their first album Ruin Porn because people get off on seeing how Detroit went from deeply loved to thoroughly forsaken, but they’re determined to prove that blight isn’t the entire story and blight isn’t always ugly.
Ritchie, Miah, Finn, and Evin take Resonator to a level no one anticipates. But no prosperity comes without sacrifice, and no secret stays hidden without a trail of lies. As Rez’s fame grows, so does the intensity between two of its members… as well as their potential for destruction.
Evin and Finn are about to discover the underlying beauty in their ruin porn.
“This is not just a gripping story that ended far too fast but it also set the scene for the next book and hopefully we won’t have to wait for too long. I expect sparks to fly and I hope we get good things for Ritchie!” ~ Prism Book Alliance
“Ok, I admit, hands-down, this book rocked! It's very different from the traditional MM stories out there, and certainly very different in the way it was written, but I loved it so damn much, I couldn't put it down! Gone was my good night of sleep and the day of getting stuff done; all that stuff became non-important to my drive to get to the end of this book.” ~ Goodreads Reviewer
“What do you do when the lies you tell could destroy everything you’ve always wanted? The answer to that is……READ.THIS.BOOK to find out I wish I could give more than 5 stars!!!! …..AND I am really hoping that there will be a book 2 so we can see what happens with Miah & Ritchie (because those 2 stubborn A$ES need to get their crap together)” ~ Two Chicks Obsessed with Books and Eye Candy
PROLOGUE
Los Angeles
EVIN LAID his forehead against the grimy front door, closed his eyes, and tried to remember how to breathe.
Maybe this was irony—two doorstep vigils in this shitty LA apartment in one year—but Evin had no
idea. He might have been one of the primary songwriters for Resonator, but putting poetic weight behind his words wasn’t the same as making sure they were neatly confined by proper grammar.
Whether or not his current pathetic situation was ironic by the strict definition was something Miah—as much as he wanted to act the dumb, egotistical lead singer—would have known. Evin smiled at the thought, then grimaced just as rapidly. The realization of just how far removed he was from the three men who had meant the most in his life for such a short but memorable time was like a physical punch to the throat and gut at the same time.
He and the founding members of Resonator had worked their asses off and fucking killed the music industry giants that told them alternative rock with a hard edge would never be massively popular again. It didn’t matter how many minds they’d changed, though, Rez was over. Disbanded. Defunct and fucked-up. It had all fallen apart so fast. Ironically (maybe), for reasons much more controversial and tabloid-worthy than everyone believed.
So much had changed in the last year that he couldn’t decide whether it was easier to start over with a new band or try to fix what had been damaged. Standing in front of this damn door yet again, he was terrified because he didn’t know what came next. The knock he was waiting for now could either bring Rez back together or put a definitive end date on all their careers. Only adding to his stratospheric stress level was the realization that he couldn’t be sure which outcome he was hoping for.
All he could be sure of was that there was change coming, and there was nothing he could do to stop it now.
He banged his forehead on the door a couple more times for good measure and muttered under his breath as he walked away, “Get it fucking together, Kevin—”
Wait.
Kevin… Evin… Fuck!
He didn’t know what to call himself anymore now that he wasn’t the bassist and songwriter for Rez.
The fans camped outside his building kept up an almost constant chant of Rezors love you and Bring back Rez. There were other more demanding and linguistically colorful phrases thrown in every now and then, but every one of them called out for Evin without fail, not Kevin.
He’d only been Evin for a year, but it wasn’t as if there was a chance for him to go back and change it—any of it—now. He might as well embrace the twenty-two-year-old man he’d become, even if he wasn’t particularly proud of who that was.
There was a tap against the door, a forlorn knock he’d been both waiting for and dreading. Then Shonda’s voice, low and soothing, reverberated through the plywood. “Security let me up. Thanks for allowing them to….”
They have no choice but to listen to everything I say. He was the one paying the four guards who verified the identities of everyone coming into this ramshackle building so that no one could sneak up and harass him. It was probably the safest the down-on-life residents of this slum had ever been.
There was the sound of crinkling plastic and the corner of a magazine appeared in the gap between the door and the tarnished, dented carpet strip. Shonda continued, “I’m just going to leave this copy here, Ev. It goes public everywhere today. I hope to hear from you. I hope it’s what you expected…. I hope maybe it changes things for Rez.” She was quiet for a moment, but Evin knew she was still there. He leaned his shoulder against the doorjamb but didn’t answer her. She sighed. “Call me.”
She knocked softly two more times, a gesture of familiarity and support, and then he could hear her shuffling away, back to the stairs, as if she was making noise so he knew she was gone and he was alone.
He waited until the silence in the hallway had dragged on for minutes before unlocking the series of deadbolts and opening his door. The magazine lying at his feet was an inanimate object. It was neither sentient nor harmful in and of itself. But Evin stared at it as if it were an exposed live wire submerged in a tank of water.
“Oh for fuck’s sake,” he grumbled, swiped the magazine up, and slammed the door shut. He made sure to click the locks home before he settled himself onto the worn futon to see what Shonda had written.
He’d made the front cover, which Shonda hadn’t prepared him for. It was ludicrous and surreal to see his ordinary bearded face—his conservatively styled sweat-soaked brown hair whipped back from his forehead by fingertips—staring back at him in the blinding black and white of a live concert shot. He immediately knew why Shonda had chosen this pic to set up her exposé. The Evin in the photograph was looking across that stage at an unseen entity, his expression equal parts rock god, lovesick fool, and insecure madman.
Evin swallowed the bile building in his throat, cracked his neck, attempting to break some of the tension, and flipped through the pages until he saw the headline—The Rezor’s Edge: Resonator’s Bassist Tells All and Yet Nothing. He skimmed the pages, getting a feel for Shonda’s writing style. She’d taken their meeting and reported it in a first-person narrative, interspersed with photos she took on her phone that day, all to give the illusion the reader was sitting at the table with her and Evin. It had been painful enough to withstand the first time around, he wasn’t sure if reliving that day in such vivid detail was a good idea. But if there was anything he had down to a science lately, it was making epically bad choices.
So he read:
We meet at a coffee shop in some alley in downtown LA. The location is suspect at best, just on the edges of Skid Row, but I try not to worry because this is Kevin “Evin” Rene’s old stomping grounds, and his clean reputation more than precedes him. For once, he’s not surrounded by bodyguards or fans, and I know why as soon as I spot him at a back table. While the Evin of Resonator fame became a fan favorite by not disguising himself when he stepped out and was always willing to stop, talk, and take pictures with fans—the hardcore and aptly named Rezors—this post-Rez iteration of Evin is wearing a baseball cap and mirrored Ray-Ban aviators to go with his usual T-shirt, jeans, and battered Converse. He looks like every other LA celebrity trying to disguise their identity, which makes him conspicuously incognito. I hardly recognize him, especially when I realize his trademark beard is gone.
He stands when he sees me coming, removes his sunglasses, and just as much the nice guy as his rep suggests, pulls out the chair across from himself. He’d texted me this morning asking what my favorite tea is, and sure enough there’s already a cup waiting for me.
“So, Evin—” I begin.
“Please, call me Kevin. It’s my real name. Well, the name on my birth certificate. You know, the name I had before all this madness—” He clears his throat and his eyes dart around uncomfortably. “—occurred.”
“So, Kevin—”
He puts up his palm and shakes his head, interrupting me again. “I’m sorry. Evin. Call me Evin. I can’t—” He stops talking abruptly and looks away.
Now my curiosity is really piqued.
“You were the one who reached out to me after the breakup. Why did you call me?” I ask.
“I’m getting a lot of requests for interviews and without the overpaid PR reps to guide me, I had to decide when and if to speak on my own. You and I know each other, sort of, from the Made in Americana tour. I couldn’t think of anyone else I could trust. Hell, I don’t know if trust is the right word. I don’t really want to be talking to you.”
“If we’re being honest, right?”
Evin shrugs.
“Let’s talk. It’s been two months since the breakup of Resonator. You were at the top of the charts when the announcement came. Why then?”
He scratches at the smooth skin of his jawline, then stops, as if he expects to be able to pull at the hair there like he did in every other interview where things got more personal. It’s a tell I don’t think he knows he has. But he seems frustrated that his beard is no longer there to pick at, and he gives that recognizable scowl that’s more precious than menacing.
I try not to laugh. “You want something easier? Less personal?”
“I don’t suppose that’s how you want this to go?”
“It’s pointless and you know it.”
He nods, sips his coffee. “But safer.”
“I won’t argue that. Okay, we’ll start slow. Tell me about Rez. About your success.”
He visibly relaxes. “I couldn’t have done it myself. Without the Detroit 3. Wouldn’t have wanted to.”
It’s the first time he’s mentioned the other three members of the now-defunct Resonator since we started negotiating this interview weeks ago: Miah Thade, lead singer, Ritchie Myer, drummer, and Finn Reese, guitarist, known as the Detroit 3 because of their shared hometown and the lifelong friendship of their fathers.
Evin doesn’t say anything else. But his intro leads us straight to the question everyone really wants to hear the answer to, so I take the opportunity and ask it. “What happened then?”
He fidgets, grips the coffee cup in his hands tighter.
I prompt him. “It would be easy to write off the breakup of Rez on the usual suspects—stress, drugs, creative differences, burnout…. But that’s not what happened, is it?”
Evin laughs, his boy-next-door smile cranking up in response, but still far from the genuine smile Rezors remember from the stage. “It’s complicated.”
“Sounds like a relationship status on Facebook and not a contractual issue as Miah Thade stated.”
The first mention of Miah’s name out loud sends Evin’s smile into an abrupt frown. “You’ll have to talk to Miah about his statement.”
“You’re not talking to him?”
“No.”
“What about any of the other members? Ritchie? Finn?”
“No.”
“So you haven’t heard where Finn is?”
“If I’m not talking to him….” Evin’s head snaps up. “Wait. Where is he?”
“No one knows. He dropped out of sight even more than you, Miah, or Ritchie when Rez disbanded. None of the guys know where he is. His family either.”
The corner of Evin’s lip tips up into a half smile, but there’s a tinge of anger to the gesture. “He’s fine. I’m sure.”
“How can you be so sure?”
“Because he’ll do whatever it takes to survive.”
With the classic avoidance technique of the nonanswer hanging between us, Evin goes quiet.
It doesn’t seem to matter to Evin that he’s the one who called me. Or maybe he doesn’t realize he’s not answering anything I’m asking him. At least not with a straight answer. It doesn’t make sense. It’s been months since the breakup, and Evin was the one who sought me out.
I lean in. “Why did you agree to speak to me today if you don’t want to answer my questions?”
“I think I’m still trying to figure it all out. I don’t know when we went from this passionate connection because of our mutual love of music to a marriage that stayed together for the kids, for the fans.”
“A marriage?” I ask him, curious about his use of the metaphor since this formation of Rez is only a year old. Evin gives a shy smile, that same one that disarmed twentysomething women worldwide since he changed the face of Rez by becoming their fourth member.
“Strange choice of words, I know. But being in a band isn’t much different. Legal contracts, name changes, compromises…. Maybe we were never as invested, never as honest with each other as we should have been.”
“Maybe?”
“Definitely.”
“You obviously have something in mind that you want to say to me. Maybe that you need to say through me and this interview? To the other members of Rez? To the fans?”
Evin nods and settles against the chair. “I have to say thank you to the fans for supporting us and evangelizing for Rez. Without them, we never could have made it as big in such a short time as we did. I love all of them and will never be able to repay them for the hours of their lives they put into lining up for our gigs and showing their adoration. To Miah…. He saw something in me I wasn’t sure was there. He had faith. I’m sorry I didn’t have the same faith in him. To Ritchie for teaching me to smile again. That fucker is uncluttered in a way everyone wishes they could be. And to Finn—”
His voice cracks, and he’s rushing the sunglasses back over his eyes before I can really see, but I swear he’s crying….
Evin slammed the magazine shut and threw it across the room, unable to finish the article. He had been at that table that day. These were his words and actions. He knew what happened next. Filtered through Shonda’s perception and journalistic dramatics, their conversation in that coffee shop took on a level of melodrama he’d expected but wasn’t quite prepared for. It didn’t change the fact that he’d said things to Shonda he never thought he would admit out loud. Things he never thought he would confess to anyone else, let alone in an international music magazine with his face on the cover. Now he had no choice but to wait and see what the fallout would be.
He stared at the glossy jumble of pages where they lay on the floor next to the kitchen. They hadn’t even made a satisfying thump when he’d pitched them against the wall. He stood, bent to pick up the mag, walked it to the recycling bin, and tossed it inside with a huff of frustration. This attention to being clean and tidy had been drummed into him during the tour—it wasn’t part of who he’d been before Rez—but he couldn’t seem to break free from the compulsion. Some habits died harder than others. Especially the ones he’d never wanted to give up.
He slid down the wall and planted his ass on the cold, cracked tiles of the kitchen floor, his head in his
hands, his knees curling into his chest. He couldn’t stop his mind from whirling around the what-ifs. The unending screams of the fans outside just made it worse. He was taunted by the memories of his time with Rez and how badly it all had ended.
Evin clutched at his chest, felt his heart stuttering under his fingertips in a way that made him understand that the heartbreak he’d written about in more songs than he could count was pretty damn close to being a real physical thing.
And while he missed them all, that bottomless emptiness he carried with him was in direct proportion to how much his hands ached to touch one of them. How desperate he was to hear that one voice. How loudly he wanted to scream at one man for taking everything they’d worked for and destroying it with his lies.
He was haunted by the memories of Finn, more than the rest of them. He had to learn how to say that name without choking. To remember his face without sadness, sickness, or pure anger.
But not today.
Today he would put some of the millions he’d earned into actually finding a decent place to live. One where security was included in the exorbitant price and he was either far enough behind a gate or high enough that he would never have to hear the fans again.
Today he would find a way to move on from this dump of a life. He had to be standing in front of a cleaner door the next time a major shift in his life came knocking.
Of course, that’s when the pounding of a fist shook the pressboard on its cheap-ass rusted hinges.
Evin thumped his head against the wall and swore under his breath.
There was only one person who would be able to make it seem as if he was reading Evin’s thoughts, only one person who would be able to charm his way past security guards who were paid to keep him out. So if he was showing up now, then another life-changing decision had been made.
And yet, Evin was staring at the same damn chintzy door.
Now that had to be irony.
Los Angeles
EVIN LAID his forehead against the grimy front door, closed his eyes, and tried to remember how to breathe.
Maybe this was irony—two doorstep vigils in this shitty LA apartment in one year—but Evin had no
idea. He might have been one of the primary songwriters for Resonator, but putting poetic weight behind his words wasn’t the same as making sure they were neatly confined by proper grammar.
Whether or not his current pathetic situation was ironic by the strict definition was something Miah—as much as he wanted to act the dumb, egotistical lead singer—would have known. Evin smiled at the thought, then grimaced just as rapidly. The realization of just how far removed he was from the three men who had meant the most in his life for such a short but memorable time was like a physical punch to the throat and gut at the same time.
He and the founding members of Resonator had worked their asses off and fucking killed the music industry giants that told them alternative rock with a hard edge would never be massively popular again. It didn’t matter how many minds they’d changed, though, Rez was over. Disbanded. Defunct and fucked-up. It had all fallen apart so fast. Ironically (maybe), for reasons much more controversial and tabloid-worthy than everyone believed.
So much had changed in the last year that he couldn’t decide whether it was easier to start over with a new band or try to fix what had been damaged. Standing in front of this damn door yet again, he was terrified because he didn’t know what came next. The knock he was waiting for now could either bring Rez back together or put a definitive end date on all their careers. Only adding to his stratospheric stress level was the realization that he couldn’t be sure which outcome he was hoping for.
All he could be sure of was that there was change coming, and there was nothing he could do to stop it now.
He banged his forehead on the door a couple more times for good measure and muttered under his breath as he walked away, “Get it fucking together, Kevin—”
Wait.
Kevin… Evin… Fuck!
He didn’t know what to call himself anymore now that he wasn’t the bassist and songwriter for Rez.
The fans camped outside his building kept up an almost constant chant of Rezors love you and Bring back Rez. There were other more demanding and linguistically colorful phrases thrown in every now and then, but every one of them called out for Evin without fail, not Kevin.
He’d only been Evin for a year, but it wasn’t as if there was a chance for him to go back and change it—any of it—now. He might as well embrace the twenty-two-year-old man he’d become, even if he wasn’t particularly proud of who that was.
There was a tap against the door, a forlorn knock he’d been both waiting for and dreading. Then Shonda’s voice, low and soothing, reverberated through the plywood. “Security let me up. Thanks for allowing them to….”
They have no choice but to listen to everything I say. He was the one paying the four guards who verified the identities of everyone coming into this ramshackle building so that no one could sneak up and harass him. It was probably the safest the down-on-life residents of this slum had ever been.
There was the sound of crinkling plastic and the corner of a magazine appeared in the gap between the door and the tarnished, dented carpet strip. Shonda continued, “I’m just going to leave this copy here, Ev. It goes public everywhere today. I hope to hear from you. I hope it’s what you expected…. I hope maybe it changes things for Rez.” She was quiet for a moment, but Evin knew she was still there. He leaned his shoulder against the doorjamb but didn’t answer her. She sighed. “Call me.”
She knocked softly two more times, a gesture of familiarity and support, and then he could hear her shuffling away, back to the stairs, as if she was making noise so he knew she was gone and he was alone.
He waited until the silence in the hallway had dragged on for minutes before unlocking the series of deadbolts and opening his door. The magazine lying at his feet was an inanimate object. It was neither sentient nor harmful in and of itself. But Evin stared at it as if it were an exposed live wire submerged in a tank of water.
“Oh for fuck’s sake,” he grumbled, swiped the magazine up, and slammed the door shut. He made sure to click the locks home before he settled himself onto the worn futon to see what Shonda had written.
He’d made the front cover, which Shonda hadn’t prepared him for. It was ludicrous and surreal to see his ordinary bearded face—his conservatively styled sweat-soaked brown hair whipped back from his forehead by fingertips—staring back at him in the blinding black and white of a live concert shot. He immediately knew why Shonda had chosen this pic to set up her exposé. The Evin in the photograph was looking across that stage at an unseen entity, his expression equal parts rock god, lovesick fool, and insecure madman.
Evin swallowed the bile building in his throat, cracked his neck, attempting to break some of the tension, and flipped through the pages until he saw the headline—The Rezor’s Edge: Resonator’s Bassist Tells All and Yet Nothing. He skimmed the pages, getting a feel for Shonda’s writing style. She’d taken their meeting and reported it in a first-person narrative, interspersed with photos she took on her phone that day, all to give the illusion the reader was sitting at the table with her and Evin. It had been painful enough to withstand the first time around, he wasn’t sure if reliving that day in such vivid detail was a good idea. But if there was anything he had down to a science lately, it was making epically bad choices.
So he read:
We meet at a coffee shop in some alley in downtown LA. The location is suspect at best, just on the edges of Skid Row, but I try not to worry because this is Kevin “Evin” Rene’s old stomping grounds, and his clean reputation more than precedes him. For once, he’s not surrounded by bodyguards or fans, and I know why as soon as I spot him at a back table. While the Evin of Resonator fame became a fan favorite by not disguising himself when he stepped out and was always willing to stop, talk, and take pictures with fans—the hardcore and aptly named Rezors—this post-Rez iteration of Evin is wearing a baseball cap and mirrored Ray-Ban aviators to go with his usual T-shirt, jeans, and battered Converse. He looks like every other LA celebrity trying to disguise their identity, which makes him conspicuously incognito. I hardly recognize him, especially when I realize his trademark beard is gone.
He stands when he sees me coming, removes his sunglasses, and just as much the nice guy as his rep suggests, pulls out the chair across from himself. He’d texted me this morning asking what my favorite tea is, and sure enough there’s already a cup waiting for me.
“So, Evin—” I begin.
“Please, call me Kevin. It’s my real name. Well, the name on my birth certificate. You know, the name I had before all this madness—” He clears his throat and his eyes dart around uncomfortably. “—occurred.”
“So, Kevin—”
He puts up his palm and shakes his head, interrupting me again. “I’m sorry. Evin. Call me Evin. I can’t—” He stops talking abruptly and looks away.
Now my curiosity is really piqued.
“You were the one who reached out to me after the breakup. Why did you call me?” I ask.
“I’m getting a lot of requests for interviews and without the overpaid PR reps to guide me, I had to decide when and if to speak on my own. You and I know each other, sort of, from the Made in Americana tour. I couldn’t think of anyone else I could trust. Hell, I don’t know if trust is the right word. I don’t really want to be talking to you.”
“If we’re being honest, right?”
Evin shrugs.
“Let’s talk. It’s been two months since the breakup of Resonator. You were at the top of the charts when the announcement came. Why then?”
He scratches at the smooth skin of his jawline, then stops, as if he expects to be able to pull at the hair there like he did in every other interview where things got more personal. It’s a tell I don’t think he knows he has. But he seems frustrated that his beard is no longer there to pick at, and he gives that recognizable scowl that’s more precious than menacing.
I try not to laugh. “You want something easier? Less personal?”
“I don’t suppose that’s how you want this to go?”
“It’s pointless and you know it.”
He nods, sips his coffee. “But safer.”
“I won’t argue that. Okay, we’ll start slow. Tell me about Rez. About your success.”
He visibly relaxes. “I couldn’t have done it myself. Without the Detroit 3. Wouldn’t have wanted to.”
It’s the first time he’s mentioned the other three members of the now-defunct Resonator since we started negotiating this interview weeks ago: Miah Thade, lead singer, Ritchie Myer, drummer, and Finn Reese, guitarist, known as the Detroit 3 because of their shared hometown and the lifelong friendship of their fathers.
Evin doesn’t say anything else. But his intro leads us straight to the question everyone really wants to hear the answer to, so I take the opportunity and ask it. “What happened then?”
He fidgets, grips the coffee cup in his hands tighter.
I prompt him. “It would be easy to write off the breakup of Rez on the usual suspects—stress, drugs, creative differences, burnout…. But that’s not what happened, is it?”
Evin laughs, his boy-next-door smile cranking up in response, but still far from the genuine smile Rezors remember from the stage. “It’s complicated.”
“Sounds like a relationship status on Facebook and not a contractual issue as Miah Thade stated.”
The first mention of Miah’s name out loud sends Evin’s smile into an abrupt frown. “You’ll have to talk to Miah about his statement.”
“You’re not talking to him?”
“No.”
“What about any of the other members? Ritchie? Finn?”
“No.”
“So you haven’t heard where Finn is?”
“If I’m not talking to him….” Evin’s head snaps up. “Wait. Where is he?”
“No one knows. He dropped out of sight even more than you, Miah, or Ritchie when Rez disbanded. None of the guys know where he is. His family either.”
The corner of Evin’s lip tips up into a half smile, but there’s a tinge of anger to the gesture. “He’s fine. I’m sure.”
“How can you be so sure?”
“Because he’ll do whatever it takes to survive.”
With the classic avoidance technique of the nonanswer hanging between us, Evin goes quiet.
It doesn’t seem to matter to Evin that he’s the one who called me. Or maybe he doesn’t realize he’s not answering anything I’m asking him. At least not with a straight answer. It doesn’t make sense. It’s been months since the breakup, and Evin was the one who sought me out.
I lean in. “Why did you agree to speak to me today if you don’t want to answer my questions?”
“I think I’m still trying to figure it all out. I don’t know when we went from this passionate connection because of our mutual love of music to a marriage that stayed together for the kids, for the fans.”
“A marriage?” I ask him, curious about his use of the metaphor since this formation of Rez is only a year old. Evin gives a shy smile, that same one that disarmed twentysomething women worldwide since he changed the face of Rez by becoming their fourth member.
“Strange choice of words, I know. But being in a band isn’t much different. Legal contracts, name changes, compromises…. Maybe we were never as invested, never as honest with each other as we should have been.”
“Maybe?”
“Definitely.”
“You obviously have something in mind that you want to say to me. Maybe that you need to say through me and this interview? To the other members of Rez? To the fans?”
Evin nods and settles against the chair. “I have to say thank you to the fans for supporting us and evangelizing for Rez. Without them, we never could have made it as big in such a short time as we did. I love all of them and will never be able to repay them for the hours of their lives they put into lining up for our gigs and showing their adoration. To Miah…. He saw something in me I wasn’t sure was there. He had faith. I’m sorry I didn’t have the same faith in him. To Ritchie for teaching me to smile again. That fucker is uncluttered in a way everyone wishes they could be. And to Finn—”
His voice cracks, and he’s rushing the sunglasses back over his eyes before I can really see, but I swear he’s crying….
Evin slammed the magazine shut and threw it across the room, unable to finish the article. He had been at that table that day. These were his words and actions. He knew what happened next. Filtered through Shonda’s perception and journalistic dramatics, their conversation in that coffee shop took on a level of melodrama he’d expected but wasn’t quite prepared for. It didn’t change the fact that he’d said things to Shonda he never thought he would admit out loud. Things he never thought he would confess to anyone else, let alone in an international music magazine with his face on the cover. Now he had no choice but to wait and see what the fallout would be.
He stared at the glossy jumble of pages where they lay on the floor next to the kitchen. They hadn’t even made a satisfying thump when he’d pitched them against the wall. He stood, bent to pick up the mag, walked it to the recycling bin, and tossed it inside with a huff of frustration. This attention to being clean and tidy had been drummed into him during the tour—it wasn’t part of who he’d been before Rez—but he couldn’t seem to break free from the compulsion. Some habits died harder than others. Especially the ones he’d never wanted to give up.
He slid down the wall and planted his ass on the cold, cracked tiles of the kitchen floor, his head in his
hands, his knees curling into his chest. He couldn’t stop his mind from whirling around the what-ifs. The unending screams of the fans outside just made it worse. He was taunted by the memories of his time with Rez and how badly it all had ended.
Evin clutched at his chest, felt his heart stuttering under his fingertips in a way that made him understand that the heartbreak he’d written about in more songs than he could count was pretty damn close to being a real physical thing.
And while he missed them all, that bottomless emptiness he carried with him was in direct proportion to how much his hands ached to touch one of them. How desperate he was to hear that one voice. How loudly he wanted to scream at one man for taking everything they’d worked for and destroying it with his lies.
He was haunted by the memories of Finn, more than the rest of them. He had to learn how to say that name without choking. To remember his face without sadness, sickness, or pure anger.
But not today.
Today he would put some of the millions he’d earned into actually finding a decent place to live. One where security was included in the exorbitant price and he was either far enough behind a gate or high enough that he would never have to hear the fans again.
Today he would find a way to move on from this dump of a life. He had to be standing in front of a cleaner door the next time a major shift in his life came knocking.
Of course, that’s when the pounding of a fist shook the pressboard on its cheap-ass rusted hinges.
Evin thumped his head against the wall and swore under his breath.
There was only one person who would be able to make it seem as if he was reading Evin’s thoughts, only one person who would be able to charm his way past security guards who were paid to keep him out. So if he was showing up now, then another life-changing decision had been made.
And yet, Evin was staring at the same damn chintzy door.
Now that had to be irony.
I sleep little, read a lot. Happiest in a foreign country. Twitchy when not mentally in motion. My name is Sam, not Sammy, definitely not Samantha. I’m a pretty dark/cynical/jaded person, but I hide that darkness well behind my obsession(s) for shiny objects. I’m the macabre wrapped in irresistible bubble wrap and a glittery pink bow, I suppose.
I have a never-ending-abyss-like secret love for poetry. Especially Rumi, Hafiz, and Neruda. You can predict (as well as change) my moods and my writing schedule by my playlists.
Insomnia is my greatest ally and my nemesis. I like cheese and bourbon, not necessarily in that order, but I’m flexible.
If you’re in any fandom, then I’m probably already in love with you. I’m not joking.
I like my tv shows marathoned and I have to use internet blocking software to be productive. I have software called Producteev that I loaded onto my laptop and proceeded to fill out in detail and now I haven’t touched it in a year.
I enjoy normalized chaos.
Hit me up! I love to hear from readers.
SJD Peterson, better known as Jo, hails from Michigan. Not the best place to live for someone who hates the cold and snow. When not reading or writing, Jo can be found close to the heater checking out NHL stats and watching the Red Wings kick a little butt. Can't cook, misses the clothes hamper nine out of ten tries, but is handy with power tools. email - sjdpeterson@gmail.com
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