Grant stepped up this time and if Jamie hadn’t been full of anger, he would have shown how surprising of an action that was on his face. There were a lot of things that Jamie wasn’t surprised of anymore. He knew that the media liked to hate on him, spin stories about how he was a player, and he knew that the label didn’t see that much potential in him anymore. They had gotten what they hold from his initial debut and now that he was old news, he wasn’t worth much.

And the fans had never really cared about him. They wanted him for a certain reason. Celebrities were commodities. If they didn’t want to fuck him for the fifteen minute fame, they wanted to be seen with them so that some of his status might rub off on them.

Or maybe they liked to taunt him now that he wasn’t anything anymore. Sam was still the golden boy. Marshall was a lapdog and Grant was a tag along.

Heath was nothing. He didn’t mean anything. He was less than Jamie even.

“Jamie, please.” There was something unsaid that was lurking in Grant’s eyes. Jamie had seen it once before, the night that everything had gone wrong. He had seen the future, somehow, and he had tried to ask Jamie to stay with that one look.

It was like Jamie was back to that night again. The screams, the fire, and he wailing sirens were in the background. He could see his bloody hands and hear his own screams that were fading as the fire rose higher and higher. And before that, he saw a glimpse of Grant’s pleading face as Jamie walked out of the door.

There were a lot of things Jamie regretted. He hadn’t thought about them in what felt like forever. He regretted getting in this bad, he regretted drinking, and he regretted ever falling for someone who was out of arms reach.

Everything he’d been doing in his life had been a wrong decision.

And this was his punishment for be a dickhead. He wasn’t a good kid. He did things to spite adults and piss people off for no god damn reason. He was never going to admit that who he was now wasn’t any better. He hadn’t ever been anything different anyway. He’d been born a demon inside of a kid’s body and his mom had seen that before anyon else too. 

Grant was like Cheryol. Grant was like Jamie’s mom in so many ways that it was scary, but he lacked something very vital.

He lacked the vicious anger that came along when she saw Jamie.

That was the only reason Jamie stayed. That was the only reason why he didn’t turn and walk out of that fucking building when Grant asked for him to stop.

Instead, he walked back to his seat and slumped. 

He glared at them all, basking in the awkward silence he’d caused. They were scared to make a move and that was exactly what he waned other than wanting to go home to his empty mansion. 

“Keep it the way it is. There’s nothing wrong with it.”

Sam shook his head. “It’s not right. The next chord needs to be risen. It’s sounds better.”

Sam whistled the tune, adding the alteration. Jamie clenched his teeth. The sound was awful. 

“I’m not asking,” he said.

Sam turned away from him. 

That pissed Jamie off more. “Don’t fucking ignore me.”

“I’m not ignoring you. I’m just tuning you out.”

“That’s the same fucking thing!”

He slammed his tightly balled fist on the arm rest. He was shaking with so much anger now that he wanted to do something with the energy.

Marshall sighed, sitting down in one of the free seats. “We’ll talk about this tomorrow. Let’s call it a day.”

The room fell silent again. Grant edged closer to the door. He looked like he wanted to bolt right out of there, but he didn’t have the confidence to be the first one to leave. Jamie tsked, leaning his head on his arm, gazing at the glass window that look into the recording booth. He imagined himself in there and what the others had heard when he recorded his piece.

He didn’t remember the writing process being this difficult. As much as he just wanted to hammer this shit album out, he still had a sliver of perfection inside him that wanted the songs to actually be good. He really shouldn’t care if this was a cash grab or that the last of the die hard fans were going to get schemed out of their last dollar.

He didn’t want to care as much as he did.

The song wasn’t going to be good. The lyrics were fine. He didn’t write them. Sam, fuck face, and Marshall had a little input. Jamie and Grant were kinda there because they were obligated to. Just because he had to be in the same room as them didn’t mean that he had to participate.

But he hated that he wasn’t doing something. He didn’t want his name tied to this when he had nothing to do with the things that he was the best at. He was the writer in Live Warnings. Sam did some songs on his own for the group, but it had mostly been Jamie. They had put that on his shoulders because he knew what he was doing.

And he wasn’t going to let that down. He wasn’t going to roll over to how them his underbelly because they didn’t want to remember that there was a reason why he was in this fucking band in the first place. He’d earned it. He did his fucking work.

Things were different though. Hard work meant nothing. 

“Let’s go.” Marshall was now at Jamie’s side. He knocked the arm that propped Jamie’s head up.

Jamie fell forward and almost out of his seat.

“Fucker,” he muttered. 

Marshall only raised a brow and even that looked like he couldn’t give much of a shit anymore. He simply turned on his heels and walked out like he just expected Jamie to follow as if he were a mutt that was being called by his master. 

Jamie was seething of course. It felt like that was all he was doing most these days. If he had a cigarette, something between his lips, or just a drink of alcohol he migh have been tolerable. But, again, they put this on themselves. They had done this because Sam wanted to break from the chains that tied all of them down.

He wanted to leave them behind one more time.

There wasn’t much he could do. He’d chewed Sam out for today. 

So, he had no choice but to go.

***

He was going to go until he fucking learned that Marshall wasn’t going to take him straight home.

“You’re what?”

Marshall climbed into the front seat and slammed the door shut. He talked to Jamie through the open passenger window, but he didn’t look at him.

“We’re all going out. Either you’re going with me or walking home.” He buckled his seatbelt. “God knows it’ll do you good to do some socializing. When’s the last time you hung out with people while sober?”

It was a sharp jab. Jamie barely flinched.

If he remembered correctly, when they were still a band and liked to have fun, Marshall participated. He was the heaviest of drinkers when he was in the mood. It was beyond hypocritical.

He must have seen the glint in Jamie’s eyes because he clenched his jaw and seemed to drop the subject.

“Get in the car if you’re going.”

Jamie also couldn’t help but remember the last time he did hang out with someone. It had been a month ago when his stash had been getting low. He invited a couple group chat friends that didn’t immediately recognize him. They thought he was some rich kid that was mooching off family money. He was more than happy for them to believe the unsaid lie. They’re assumption made it easier for him to relax and not have them tattling to the tabloids about what he liked to get up to in the privacy of his own home. 

He looked around. The street was pretty bare for a change. He almost expected a large crowd of screaming girls to turn the corner. That would have been too much like the old days. He never saw what those girls thought the band was like. They didn’t understand anything abou the situation he’d been put in. At first, it was okay because he thought he could handle the pressure. He thought it was normal to feel like a piece of shit. And a lot of people convinced him that this was what he deserved in exchange for he fame and money.

They had the audacity to say he should be thankful to be shit on. Like he didn’t do any hard work and that he was just given all these opportunities.

They had no idea. 

It was so fucking typical for them to assume and not dig further than the surface. 

He didn’t want to chance going through all that by getting a cab ride to the hotel or trying to walk there.

When he sat in the car and slammed the door shut, he tried as much as possible to not look at Marshall.

Yet, he could still see the quirk of his mouth out of he corner of his eye. His own mouth turned down in a frown. He stared off at the side of the road as they drove toward wherever Marshall was going. He hadn’t cared enough to ask because he knew that he wouldn’t like the answer either way. Sometimes, silence meant a lot more than talking. He’d been in a lot of it since his parole and the band split that he’d become very used to the different kinds of silences.

On the drive over, he fell asleep somewhere in between the travel.

He woke up when Marshall opened the door. He almost fell out if he hadn’t been wearing his seatbelt. He didn’t remember putting it on and he couldn’t remember if Marshall had buckled him in. His chest felt tight when he thought about that. He crushed the feeling, knowing that if he tried to think too hard about it he would get upset.

He was tired of giving everyone a piece of him. He wasn’t going to do that anymore. He was going to sit back and let this shit storm unfold while he basked in it. That had been the plan anyway. He hadn’t meant to be called out to LA for a plan that was surely going to go down in flames.