I wanted to punch him. I wanted to fucking lay him on his guido ass. I wanted to bury him with his words. He lived in my fucking house. He played in my fucking band. He could learn how to fucking treat a brother.

“I don’t need to hear this shit.” I turned and walked toward the door.

“You’re just going to fucking back down and walk away?” Vin taunted me.

“I’m going to fucking get out of here before I beat the shit out of you.”

“All of this over one chick?”

I stopped with my hand on the doorknob. “Just think, Vin, more pussy for you.”

Shit was still tense between Vin and me backstage at the next ContraBand show. We’d rehearsed during the last week, but there had been no chance of us trying my new song when neither of us could see eye-to-eye on anything. It was our last show before the Poconos music festival, and we couldn’t even agree on a set for tonight.

A part of me refused to see reason in what Vin had said. I could do whatever the fuck I wanted with whoever I wanted. If that meant I was spending all my time with Aribel and not fucking dumb useless chicks, then I was entitled to that choice. But the other part of me saw exactly what Vin had spouted. Could someone do a one-eighty in a couple of months? I hadn’t gotten my dick wet because of her. Is it even worth that?

It was fucking Ari. I wanted to say yes. I’d told her she was worth waiting for. But just hearing Vin talk about it had made me second-guess everything I’d offered her at the beach. I was some uneducated jackass with no future and more than a few skeletons in my past. My reputation was warranted because the line of girls I’d fucked stretched from one end of the state to the other. Had I actually changed? Or did I just want to believe I had for her?

And just thinking about all of that fucked with my mind.

I should have been preparing myself to go onstage for our show. Instead, I was drinking like a fish backstage, trying not to think about how much of a fuck-up I was. I’d gone onstage wasted before, but my heart had been into it. Right now, the only thing my heart was into was the bottle in my hands.

“Hey, babe, you got a light?” I asked a chick standing near me.

Her big brown eyes stared up at me with reverence, and all I saw were her tits.

She fished in her purse and produced a lighter. “Let me do that for you.” She cupped her hand around the cigarette hanging between my lips and then flicked the Zippo to light it.

“Thanks, darlin’.”

I pulled a drag on the cigarette and then breathed the smoke out into her face. I preferred to smoke weed, but I hadn’t gone to see my guy in, like, a fucking month, so this would have to do.

“Anytime,” she said.

She wasn’t even offended that I’d just fucking blown smoke into her face. She was actually leaning into me. Damn, chicks are so easy.

“What are you doing later?” she asked.

Not her—that’s for damn sure. “You know, you have a familiar face.”

The girl scrunched up her nose. “I’ve been to all your shows.”

“Oh, yeah?” I breathed in and puffed out the smoke into her familiar face again.

She nodded slowly and placed her hand on my chest. Yeah, so not happening. There was brown hair where there should have been blonde, and brown eyes where there should have been hurricane blue.

“Huh. You know Aribel Graham by any chance?”

The girl straightened, flustered. “Aribel?” she snapped. “I think we have classes together,” she said with a shrug. “Blonde, kind of weird, always with some guy. Benjamin, I think?”

I stumbled a step backward. What the fuck? No way. No fucking way. Not my Ari. A pang of jealousy shot through my chest. I hadn’t been with anyone else since fucking September, and Ari had still been seeing her ex-boyfriend? I thought I’d gotten rid of Benny on day one.

“Are you okay?” she asked, her tits pressing into my arm.

“Fine. Just got a show tonight,” I said, passing her my beer without thinking.

I walked away to find Miller. Ari wasn’t supposed to be at the show until we started performing, so I couldn’t even fucking ask her what was going on. That wasn’t something I could do through a text message.

“You ready to go?” Miller asked when I finally found him outside.

“Yeah.”

“You look completely fucked-up. Are you even going to be able to play?” He sounded furious.

“Bro, lay off. I can fucking play this set blindfolded, high as a kite.”

Miller shook his head. “Well, you can’t sing with this in your mouth.” He took the cigarette from me and stubbed it out under his foot. “And if you don’t get your head out of your ass about the shit Vin said, then I’m going to fucking cancel tonight.”

“You can’t fucking cancel!”

“I can do whatever the fuck I want! I book the shows. I write the songs. I keep your dumbasses in line. You have feelings for Aribel. She’s fucking knocked some humanity into you. Don’t let Vin convince you that’s a bad thing. That would make you even more of a fucking idiot than you already are, and I don’t want to see what that would do to my best friend.”

“I think she’s seeing someone else,” I confided.

“Fuck. You sure? You talked to her about this?”

“Nah, man.”

Miller glared at me. “You fuck this up for no good reason, and you’ll regret it. Play our set, and then talk to your fucking girl.”

I was running late. Gah! I hated being late to anything. I’d barely even seen Grant this week since I’d been back in town. Now, I was showing up late to the last ContraBand show of the semester. Sure, I would get to see him perform again in a week, but this felt different.

Cheyenne, Shelby, and Gabi had left for the show an hour ago, but I’d had to finish my calculus assignment that was due on Monday, so I could spend all day tomorrow studying for chemistry. I was clearly a shit girlfriend.

Grant’s dog tags clattered around my neck as I jogged across the parking lot and into The Ivy League. Just by catching a few chords, I knew that they were already on the third or fourth song. I eased my way through the crowd, using Cheyenne’s bright red hair as a guide.

“Sorry,” I said when I finally reached her.

“You missed ‘Hemorrhage,’” she shouted over the cheers.

I shrugged apologetically. “But at least the homework is done.”

“You’re insane.”

Like Cheyenne is one to talk.

I turned my attention away from my friends. There were more important things to look at. When I glanced up at Grant, he was staring right at me. His gaze burned through me like a firecracker igniting every inch of my body. I flushed at the intensity, but I didn’t dare look away. There was something in his posture, in his stare, that was stripping me bare.

Being without him for a week had been a bit like suffocating. Going home to see my family had made me realize that I’d been living in a bubble. I loved my parents and my brother, Aaron, but the world was more than the kind of job I had, the kind of car I drove, and how big my house was. I’d felt stuffy and restricted in the world I’d always felt most comfortable in.

Maybe I wasn’t part of Grant’s world—a world run by how high someone could get on the next adrenaline rush—but I wasn’t part of mine either. I’d never thought I’d be comfortable in a middle ground, not that I’d ever even given myself an option.

Grant ended the set, and then without a backward glance, he stormed offstage with his guitar still slung over his shoulder. Odd. He was never careless with equipment and certainly not his baby.

“What’s up with him?” Shelby asked. “He didn’t seem into that at all.”

“What?”

He’d seemed into me, but now that I was thinking about it, Grant hadn’t been invested in the crowd like he normally was.