Blazed(24)

I easily could have gotten away with calling Chris, Esme, Daniel and Jonathan down, but for once in my strange life, I was selfishly enjoying the limelight from being sat with incredible company that were honestly looking at me like I was the amazing spectacle in the room.

Pictures didn't do Chase Garret justice. He looked to be on top form that night, blonde hair combed back over a face that boasted bright blue eyes and an attractively angular jaw line. He had a foul reputation, but that didn't seem like the man who sat on the other side of Blaze, who was territorially obstructing our conversation by hovering backwards and forwards while we tried to talk around him. Chase was the kind of gorgeous one-time-only lay I enjoyed in Blaze's absence and I think they both sensed it.

"So you seem way too hot to be a nerd." The drummer, Jordan, forced a ceasefire with his observation. He was quieter but sharper, with keen brown eyes and long hair that fell to his shoulders. A * cat by nature without a doubt, and shy in bigger crowds. I could relate. "Hot and smart don't really mix."

"What can I say?" I pouted at him sarcastically. "I'm the whole package."

"I'm not convinced. I think you hide your lies in your boobs."

Blaze sat up poker straight and glared in his direction. "Why are you looking at her rack, Jord?"

He laughed back awkwardly, clearly not knowing where to put himself. It was strange seeing Blaze so on edge when he was usually such a gentle soul, so cool and collected in spite of his name. It was a revelation almost, seeing a crack in his composure.

The unease was contagious. Was he having second thoughts about introducing me to his friends like this?

"Before you humiliate yourself by acting like a complete idiot..." I warned him in a quiet but strong voice that might have seemed like a whisper if it wasn't so audible. It was the hostilely sweet tone I'd learned after years of watching my mother berate Henry for telling racist jokes in public. "... remember what I chose to wear before you strolled into my life and took a rather large, spectacular crap on all that I know. You picked this outfit out and dressed me into it, commenting on said rack as you did so. Therefore you have no rational excuse to expect others to not notice too. Unless of course you're embarrassed to see me showcasing the assets I thought I understood you were quite partial to." Patiently, I turned back to Jordan, who regarded me with utmost respect, sparking the suspicion that anyone rarely spoke down to Blaze. "Try me. Challenge my inner geek."

He stammered and shook his head, sagging back into his bowl seated arm chair. Obviously, I had him at a loss by putting him on the spot.

"Permission to antagonise?" Matt, their bassist raised a hand and shrugged at me, standing forth as the only one with the guts to take me on. I nodded my assent and smiled politely. "Ironman was the best hero DC came up with."

"Wrong. Ironman was one of the best heroes Marvel came up with. Stan Lee would f*ck you up for blurring that line."

"She's good. Though not too riled..." I bared my teeth like a dog and faked a snarl. "Okay, okay. Jar Jar Binks was the greatest science-fiction character to rise from the brain of the god of everything— James Cameron."

I grabbed my drink, inwardly seething and leaned back coolly into my corner of the couch. He'd not so much antagonised as picked at the very sore point for all of nerdkind and done it in style. "Maybe Stan Lee won't f*ck you up. Maybe I'll save him a job."

"Yeah, she's a nerd alright." Matt grinned across at me, tipping his glass towards me as an apology. "Sorry I had to put you through that, Emmy. We're kind of a big deal, you know. We have to know that we're not dealing with fakers."

Secretly, I glanced across the room and clenched my jaw. I was a club owner, a mess, and technically a billionaire dressed in sheep's clothing. Albeit a pretty slutty sheep, but I was possibly the biggest faker they would have hoped to find. "Yeah, yeah. Your mouth is moving but all I hear is 'did you feel that just then? That was me killing a piece of your soul with my sick, twisted mind games'."

The light-hearted banter was disturbed by guitarist, Scott, emerging from a dressing room and laying a hard slap on the backside of the girl who came with him— him looking pleased with himself and her not so much, rubbing at the smudged line of her lipstick. She looked younger than me, barely out of school. Assumptions were drawn. I presumed Scott had taken over Chase's role as mouthpiece after his tiny 'indiscretion' last year and flaunted the position of power to rope in groupies. Whoever he was, I didn't feel the same sense of familiarity with him as I did with his bandmates. He was undeniably 'off' in comparison.

"You must be 'the artist'." His breath stank of hard liquor, detectable even at a distance. I wasn't really sure what I'd expected from them, but maybe I should have had a more realistic view that at least one of them would be more than a little narcissistic. Scott was it, probably what you'd now call the Monday's Miracle pretty boy, and he damn well knew it. "How are you tolerating his bullshit?"

Figuring he was talking about Blaze, I cleared my throat and leaned over the back of the couch to look at him deadpan. "I was fine until he brought me out in public. Are you my enemy, fool, or my way out? Will you reel me in or cast me free? Am I leaving here with you tonight, or the idiot I brought with me?" Apparently baffled by my knowledge of their song lyrics, a stunned silence spread across the stage before it was fractured by raucous laughter and the unexpected shower of glitter from a large, spontaneously popped balloon hanging from the light rigging overhead. "Oh Jesus, close your mouths! If you swallow too much of this you'll be shitting it for days."

"How in hell would you know something like that?"

"I have a friend who tried to cheer me up with glittery space cakes when we first met." It was a fond memory I had from the early days of my friendship with Chris, back when he thought that he could storm in like a white knight, fix me and take the rescued damsel in distress as his prize. He couldn't stand to see me so miserable on my eighteenth birthday, so let himself into my flat while I was at work and waited in the dark for me. He scared the hell out of me, and I laughed with him through the haze of the cannabis, but I was no closer to recovery then than I was at that moment in The Roses. It took a long time to accept that I'd always be 'in recovery'— Daniel liked to call it my remission. It just meant a lot that he'd tried.

"What's with the glitter anyway, seems kind of misplaced."

"Glitter," Chase started, rolling his eyes when Scott flounced off with his plaything, uninterested in the conversation, "lost a lot of credibility when the whole 'sparkly vampire' thing became pop-culture. We're trying to prove that you can rock it without being queer about it."

"You're trying to prove that one of the campest decorations in existence isn't queer?" I pulled a face and mumbled into my glass. "Your logic is flawed."

"Precisely!" Their faces seemed to light up, leaving me confused and needing an explanation. "It's totally f*cking flawed, that's the beauty of it. It's a direct contradiction of itself and still, we're doing it proudly. Everyone is flawed, no matter how much they want to deny it, but flaws should be embraced and celebrated. We'd all be pretty boring without our f*cked-up-ness— no interesting tales of woe to rivet people or any sour experiences to shape us. Think of someone 'normal' who's never suffered at the hands of negativity, then think of someone who's a mess. Who's more interesting?" Immediately, I thought of my sister, Tallulah, who never paid much attention to the fact her little sister was trapped in her own personal hell. She lived the high life everyone else could only wish for, and she was boring as sin. That was her flaw, that she was flawless.

"I get it," I nodded, and I did. Blaze's philosophy of appreciating how screwed up I was wasn't as exclusive as I'd first thought. There were a whole host of people out there who wore their quirks almost proudly on their sleeves, and after years of feeling like I was the most damaged person in the world, it wasn't until I was sat in the company of an ex-blackmailer reliant on psychostimulants to not be a complete bastard that I realised that my life could be so much worse.





I WAS ALREADY drunk when we were ushered off the stage so the roadies could do their last minute checks and open the venue doors, swaying slightly on purpose to make the light cast off the silver sparkles on my skin. A sense of warm euphoria filled me instead of the usual intoxicated haze, along with the vague sense of guilt that I should have been sharing the experience with my friends. Still, I'd heard that when life hands you lemons, you should make lemonade, and while I didn't have the necessary equipment to start a production line for carbonated beverages at my disposal, I did have some sort of alcoholic lemon cocktail in my hand. It seemed like a fair compromise.

"So where are we sitting?" I wandered between the seats, running my free hand over the soft suede fabric of the seats as I walked. "Or standing? Are we standing?" Blaze grunted quietly and jerked his head towards the stage. He'd been unusually quiet since his telling off, speaking only in response to a question. "You're freaking me out."