The firm, no-nonsense Matt answered me. “We can’t, Griffin. This business is competitive, we have to continuously release new stuff to stay relevant. We need to keep pushing the envelope.”
Irritation ripped up my spine so fast, the hair stood up on my arms. Push the envelope, stay fresh? That was the same shit I’d been saying on tour, when I’d tried to get them to give me five seconds in the sun. Hadn’t meant a damn to them then, so why should it now? “You were fine sticking to the same ole on tour. What’s it matter now?”
My voice echoed my mood, and Matt let out that damn impatient sigh that everyone around me seemed to have mastered. “Griffin…” Just the condescending way he said my name set me off. I wasn’t three, and he wasn’t my dad.
“Don’t ‘Griffin’ me, I have a point and you know it. You guys blew me off, even before the tour, when you flat-out told me no, I couldn’t advance my position. So why should I give you the time of day? What’s in it for me to be a part of this band?”
Silence fell around my home, and I could feel everyone’s eyes on me. Maybe I should have taken this into the other room. Matt was silent a moment before he answered me. “What’s in it for you is what’s always been in it for you—fame, money, and women. That’s all you care about, all you’ve ever cared about, so don’t act like we’re screwing you over by making sure you get exactly what you love. Rehearsal is tomorrow at three. I’ll see you then.”
He hung up the phone before I could respond, and all I could do was stare at the damn thing and wait for my fluctuating mood to even out. Fame, money, and women? Yeah, maybe that had been my goal in the beginning…and maybe it still was now, but…something was missing. I had a hole in me that wasn’t being filled properly, and FMW just wasn’t enough anymore.
Dad was giving me concerned eyes when I put the phone away. “Everything okay?”
Trying not to sound too disgruntled, I told him, “Yeah. Matt was just being a douche is all, like normal. He says hi, by the way, and wants to hang out while you’re in town.”
Dad’s worry faded away as he smiled. My parents both loved Matt to pieces. Matt used to joke that they wished he was their son and not me, but I knew that wasn’t true. Well, I was pretty sure that wasn’t true. I was the coolest person my parents knew. They had bragging rights for being able to say they’d encoded my DNA. They couldn’t say the same about Matt. He was Uncle Billy’s kid through and through. They even had the same stick poking out their assholes.
I considered bailing on rehearsal, but Matt would just hound me until I showed up, and Mom and Dad wanted to go “watch the show.” I told them a few times there wouldn’t be much of one, since the “show” was mainly going to consist of Matt, Kellan, and Evan huddling around a piece of paper covered with lyrics that, to be brutally honest, didn’t make any sense at all.
They insisted on coming though, along with Liam, Chelsey, and the girls, so the whole damn family was packing up to head out to the countryside. Oh well. At least Dawn and Della would get a kick out of running around Kellan’s farm. Okay, he technically didn’t have a farm since the only animals on the property were a couple of stray cats, but it had that rural, rustic, there-are-pigs-in-the-shed feel to it.
I sighed as I took one last look at my backyard. It butted up against Lake Washington, and there was a private dock, with a few feet of shoreline that created a shallow area for Gibson to play. But the favorite part of my backyard…there was no grass to mow. The entire space was one gargantuan tennis court. I didn’t even own a mower. Neither Anna nor I could play tennis for shit, but just the fact that my “grass” was artificial was amazing. You couldn’t find crap like that in the countryside. Kellan was missing out.
When we finally got to Kellan’s ostentatious security system, I let Kellan know that my family was with me. Maybe I should have asked if they could come, but asking permission wasn’t my style.
After ringing the Let me the fuck in buzzer, I said into the intercom box, “Hey, Kell…Anna and I are here, and uh…we’ve got two cars…’cause, you know, I have family visiting and they want to see your spread.” Leaning over the steering wheel, I added, “And just so you’re aware, if my dad has a heart attack climbing up your forty thousand steps, I’m totally suing you.”
“Always a pleasure, Griffin,” Kellan’s tinny voice responded.
I smiled up at the camera while the gate squeaked open, then I made an exaggerated waving motion with my hand so Dad would know to follow me. Our caravan wound its way up Kellan’s driveway. When we pulled to a stop at the bottom of the steep slope where Kellan’s palatial home rested, Liam oohed and aahed. You’d think he hadn’t been to my house at all by the way he acted. I mean, come on, my pool was indoors!
“Damn,” he muttered. “So this is what being the biggest rock star in the world gets you,” he muttered.
Removing my seat belt, I twisted in my seat to toss him a glare. “Second biggest, or equally big to me. We’re the same size, I mean.”
Liam’s lips curled up as an indecent thought snapped into his brain. “I’m sure you are,” he told me, amusement all over his face. “But did you measure, just to be sure?”
“Ha. Ha. Go for the penis joke, how original.”
Anna let out a soft laugh, and I turned my attention her way. She shook her head as her jade eyes locked on mine. “Nowhere near the same size. Kellan wishes,” she added with a wink.