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Must
play the guitar fluidly with an ability to pick up songs fast, powerful vocal
delivery a must, would prefer someone familiar with Deviant Angel or at the
very least, their style of music, but willing to audition anyone able to adapt
their style to fit the band’s.
That wasn’t asking too much, at least not to
Riley’s way of thinking, but after a week of nothing, despite how many flyers
they’d put up and websites they’d posted on, and Riley was beginning to rethink
his position. It could not be over. NO way in hell was he going to allow one
selfish asshole to pull the plug on everything they’d spent the last thirteen
years working for.
Fuckin’ Wade.
Had he honestly expected them to just roll
over and take it. Play dead and spend the rest of their lives living off their
bank accounts and reminiscing about their glory days? Hell, as far as Riley was
concerned, they hadn’t even come close to reaching their peak yet. He’d always
envisioned jamming away well into his sixties like the Stones, each new album a
reinvention of themselves. Proving they had the staying power to be relevant
not just to this generation, but to generations to come.
No way was it over. He wasn’t ready to hang
his guitar on the wall alongside their gold records like some makeshift shrine
to what used to be. There were too many subjects he’d only scratched the
surface of. Too many places left to see. Too many people left to play for
and too much inside him that he hadn’t managed to bleed onto the stage. This
last tour he’d finally begun to understand who he was as a musician and
formulate a vision of what he still wanted to accomplish. Hell, he and Zakk had
spent hours talking about the plans they had for the future. Sounds and themes
and collaborative collections of ideas they could build on for decades to come.
That vision still burned bright in his mind and he’d be damned if he was
letting anyone, especially a former friend, snuff it out.
Fuckin’ Wade.
There was this question reporters loved to
ask, about what he’d be doing if he wasn’t making music. He hated that god
damned question because he never had an answer. What would he be doing? How
about going out of his goddamn mind? How about restlessly trying to keep his
fingers busy with halfhearted attempts at flower arranging or building ships in
a bottle. Maybe he’d try his hand at basket weaving or learning to create
elaborate hairstyles out of hundreds of tiny braids or maybe he’d just hurl
himself in front of a bus, it would be less painful than never playing again.
His left eye twitched, vision going wonky as
he stared down at the flyer, feeling the first stirrings of a headache coming
on. Better to cut that shit off right quick so he could enjoy his meal. Was
likely to be the only thing he enjoyed tonight.
Fishing
a painkiller from his pocket, Riley downed it and the rest of his water and
regretted it not two minutes later when his bladder protested the amount of
liquid he’d introduced to it. So much for sipping the whiskey, if he was
leaving his table he wasn’t leaving that expensive shit unattended. One run-in
with ecstasy in a lifetime was more than enough, thank you very much. He
slammed it back and let the glass clatter against the tabletop a little louder
than necessary, drawing disapproving frowns from the couple he’d already
managed to annoy as well as the Sommelier who no doubt would take his time
returning to the table to see if Riley wanted another. Might be for the best,
really. Was hard enough to catch a cab in this town when you could walk straight.
Making his way to the bathroom was easy
enough, but stepping out, something caught his attention that sent him in the
opposite direction of the dining room. Dishes clinking lightly against one
another couldn’t dull the magnificently gruff, raspy words delivered with a
ballsy enthusiasm that left Riley longing to join in.
Instead, he leaned in the doorway of the
kitchen, observing the broad back of the over six-foot singer, whose hair was
either extremely dark, or the hairnet was making it look that way. He was
rinsing dishes while a shorter man loaded them in a large commercial
dishwasher, silverware rattling every time he shoved a dish in too hard. The
song was a well-known favorite of the nineties, dark and growly in its original
form, yet somehow, this guy was managing to make it both devastatingly haunting
and rougher all at the same time.
Damn, but something about him was familiar.
Riley kept hoping for a glimpse of his face as he moved, but so far, all he’d
been able to make out was the barest hint of a neatly trimmed beard. Even the
curse words drifting down the hall as some poor unfortunate soul on the kitchen
staff got one hell of a dressing down, couldn’t dull the edgy mystique of the
song.
“Hey! You can’t be back here!”
Blinking, Riley tore his eyes off the singer
to see the other dishwasher glaring at him. Of course, that ended the song as
the man Riley had been hoping for a glimpse of turned, revealing intense
gray-green eyes set in a face that drew a shuddering gasp from Riley.
“I know you,” Riley remarked, taking several shaky
steps inside the room.
“No, you don’t.”
Bullshit! His voice, soft-spoken but firm,
unlike the blustering aggression of the other man, held a musical quality to
it, as if he could never quite reign in the urge to sing. He hadn’t forgotten that quality either, despite the brevity
of their only conversation.
“Actually, I do. I saw you play in a little
dive bar in South Mississippi back when they were finding all those old bones
and the place was practically crawling with feds. Saw you play about five years
before that too. In Chicago, on stage at a huge ass arena. You were in the band
that opened that night. We talked a little after the show, at some wannabe
blues bar across the square. I said you played beautifully, you told me I was tone-deaf.”
“Guess whoever it was should have added
delusional too. Time for you to go back to your table, sir. Like my cousin
said, you can’t be back here.”
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