FicWad

The eight ‘o’ clock rush was setting in as I stamped out my cigarette backstage. Local managers, other band members, and lots of hot women. I eyed a long-legged blonde, filing her black fishnet attire in the back of my mind for later tonight. Setting out to find Duff, I could hear the rest of the crowd filing into the joint, rowdy and loud. Izzy, Duff, and Steven were all bumming around backstage next to the curtain, with Izzy rolling a couple of joints on the face of an Aerosmith record, and the other to jamming away. “What time are we goin’ out?” I asked.
“We’re goin’ onstage around nine,” Izzy told me, holding out his hand for a lighter,
“We don’t worry about nothin’, ‘cause worryin’s a waste of time,” I grinned, flipping mine to him. Duff laughed, grabbing one of the blunts for himself.
“Well would you listen to that, you poetic fucker, you.”
“Hey, being the poetic fucker is my job!” Izzy protested, waving his pot in the air for emphasis.
“Oh, you little bitch,” Steven told him happily, realizing all the weed had been claimed, and snatching Izzy’s out of his mouth for a hit. We all looked up at the commotion across the room, hearing deep male voices. I was already pretty sure what was going on, and was confirmed as I stood up. Axl had arrived. I shot Izzy a look and we shouldered over to the tumult.
“Yeah, I got a gig to play! You got a fuckin’ problem?”
The guy he was yelling at looked terrified, and I didn’t blame him. Axl’s a scary guy when he gets set off. Izzy and I took him by the arms and dragged him back over to Duff and Steven, who were suddenly very interested in their boots.
We let go, but he didn’t set down, pacing agitatedly.
“Hey man, what happened?” I asked carefully. The last thing I wanted was to get him irritated with me too.
He just shook his head and scowled, and kept pacing. I kept my mouth shut from then on, grabbing my guitar. I sat down and started at him, wondering what had happened. It seemed like it must have happened back at the apartment, since he was pissed when he got here. Suddenly I realized something. Where was Erin? She should have arrived with him. Now it was my turn to scowl, down at my guitar. I had expected her to be here. I picked moodily at the strings, wondering what had gone down between the two of them. Hopefully had a fight. I scowled again and shook my head. No, not hopefully, that would be a bad thing. Or would it? I felt like kicking myself. It came as a relief to hear Duff’s voice.
“C’mon boys, let’s rock the house.” He grinned at us, a bit nervously towards Axl, but grinned nevertheless. We all stood up, they ready to play a good show, me with my head in a luxury apartment complex somewhere in downtown L.A. I hung back a bit, where Axl was at the back of the pack. Right before we stepped out from behind the curtain, I threw an offhand comment, hoping to fly underneath the radar.
“Hey man, where’s Erin, thought she was gonna watch?”
He glowered at the ground. “She’s meeting us here after the show,” he said shortly, and with that, we stepped out into the bright lights of the jungle.
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I jumped down the side stage steps, slapping hands with Duff. We had played a kick-ass show, and we knew it. The only problem was Axl. I shot him a glance as we stepped into the unruly crowd, plunging into the sea of cigarette smoke and loud voices. He had been in a bad mood the entire gig, and it showed. The energy went down considerably when he wasn’t feeling it, and he sure wasn’t tonight. I shook my head, glancing around at the rest of the crowd. There were a couple dealers I recognized, but none I needed to buy from. Plenty of women, though. I ran my eye over a couple of them appreciatively, leaning back to compare notes with Steven.
“I call the vampire,” he told me out of the corner of his mouth. Following his gaze to the bar, I saw the girl he was looking at. Black hair, red lips, she was a hot number. Hard face, though. I ran my eye around the joint again. They all had that same partying look to them, actually. Those were L.A. girls for you. Letting my gaze skip along the rest of the stools, I did see one girl that had a more delicate face, like a doll. That was something you didn’t see very often. I squinted more closely through the cloud of smoke and people and felt a jolt in my stomach, realizing.
It was Erin. I looked at Axl, who seemed to have noticed her sitting there too. He grimaced and turned away, talking to one of the producers in the crowd again. Hopefully he didn’t bite this one’s head off. Taking a final glance around, I started elbowing through the pack, making my way to where she was sitting at the bar. I noticed grimly the bartender hitting on her, and walked faster through the club. Her stool was swiveled towards the stage, so she saw me coming. I stepped up beside her, throwing the bartender a warning look. Fuck off. He quickly turned away, taking an order from Steven’s claimed vampire. I turned my attention to Erin, who was stirring her vodka and tonic and looking at me. I could feel my tongue going thick, and quickly ordered a shot of tequila before even attempting to speak to her. I felt a bit better after the alcohol.
“What’d you think? How’d we do?” I grinned down at her, daring her to say anything but incredible. She flicked her double straw at me before answering.
“Incredible, of course.”
“That’s what I like to hear,” I told her, ordering another shot. The way she was looking at me was giving me a weird feeling in my midsection, and if Axl came over now, I was dead meat. She turned back to the bar as well to order another cocktail, and as she did, I noticed something.
A bruise. It was trailing from her temple to the bottom of her cheek, and it looked new. I set my shot glass down on the bar and stared. The bar lights threw the purple mark into sharp relief. My stomach twisted, and my eyes found Axl in the crowd, still sulking and scowling. Dangerous. I looked at Erin again.
Surely he wouldn’t. . .
But he would. And I knew it. I ordered yet another shot. It was going to be a long night.