Chapter Four

 

 

There was some panic the next morning when Cole wasn’t in his own bed. Scott almost sent out a search party before trying my room as a last resort.

Waking up in Cole’s arms was the very best way to start the day. Unfortunately we didn’t get to enjoy it for too long.

The boys of Two Dimension had a photo shoot scheduled early so they barely had time to scoff down breakfast before piling into a van and being taken away.

Cole insisted I come with them so we could spend as much time together as possible. Scott tried to talk him out of it but he wouldn’t change his mind.

The shoot was being held on the top of a fancy building. It had real gold statues in the garden they’d built on the roof. It was crazy to think how much money they’d spent on the area.

I was given a chair out of the way and told to stay there. No prizes for guessing who had barked that order at me. I didn’t mind so much this time because I could see everything and it was a beautiful day so the weather was pleasant.

The boys took a bunch of photos together before splitting off and doing some individual shots. After those they then did group shots without Luke.

It was really sad seeing the group missing one. I know they had to be careful and plan for Luke maybe not being in the band anymore but it still felt weird.

Luke took the empty seat beside me while he waited for the others. I didn’t know what to say to him but it felt like I had to say something. “I’m sorry to hear you might be leaving the band.”

He took a long sip out of his water bottle before he answered. “I’m not. The band has been a great experience and I’m so grateful for everything we’ve done. But I need to move on, I miss home too much.”

“Is that the only reason? You miss home?”

“It’s a crazy life and I just don’t want to do it anymore.” He forced a reassuring smile. “The band will go on without me. Once everyone adjusts they won’t even miss me.”

“You’ll always be missed. Every one of you are important in your own way,” I said. I wanted to say the magic words to convince him to stay but I knew they would never come.

Luke had obviously made up his mind and thought about it intensely. Nothing anybody could do would change his mind.

“When will you leave?” I asked, hoping for some time in the distant future.

“As soon as we figure out a few contract issues. Our lawyers are looking into it now.” He laughed. “They don’t know if it’s legal for me to go yet. They could sue me for breaking contracts.”

“The other band members could sue you?”

“Yeah. They said they wouldn’t but anything could happen if it gets nasty.”

The boys had all been best friends, I couldn’t imagine them holding Luke hostage if his heart was no longer in the band. Cole wouldn’t, anyway. I was certain of it.

“Melrose!” Cole called out. “Come have your picture taken with me.”

I shook my head. They had all been in hair and makeup, I hadn’t. There was no way I wanted to intrude on their shoot.

Cole was persistent. “Come on! I want a photo with my hot girlfriend.”

“You should go, he’s only going to keep asking you,” Luke said dryly.

Embarrassed about everyone looking at me, I got up and begrudgingly went to Cole. He pulled me in close while the photographer continually took pictures.

Cole pulled a silly face and made me laugh. From then onwards, I couldn’t keep the smile from my face. He always made things seem like fun instead of work.

“Come on, let’s go,” Dylan called out. The other band members all grabbed their things to go.

“We’d better get going,” Cole said before thanking the photographer and everyone else on the shoot. We joined the others but there seemed to be tension between all the boys.

We all climbed into the waiting van.

And then it all exploded into an argument.

“I’m tired of you goofing around at these shoots,” Dylan said. “We have a job to do and it’s going to put us all behind schedule for the day.”

“Hey, ease up, man,” Reed replied. “It’s just a little fun. If we don’t have that then what’s the point of this whole thing?”

“The point is we’re supposed to be professionals.”

“Yeah, and we’re all seventeen. How about you act your age occasionally?” Reed arched an eyebrow and Dylan huffed.

And then it got worse.

“If this is about me taking a few photos with my girl, then back off, dude,” Cole added. “You know how much I miss her when she’s not here.”

I remained completely quiet. Awkward didn’t even begin to explain the atmosphere in the van. I considered opening the door and jumping out just to get away from it all.

“We’re all missing people,” Luke said. “You act like you’re the only one but we’re all going through the same thing. This is exactly why I don’t want to be in this band anymore.”

“So you’d rather run back home to mommy and disappoint millions of fans? Good one, bro,” Nick said.

“I’m not running anywhere, clearly! You guys won’t let me out of a contract we signed when we were fifteen years old!” Luke yelled at everyone. He slumped back in his seat with crossed arms.

“It’s up to the lawyers, man. More people than just us five rely on this band. We’re a business, we can’t just do whatever we want.” Dylan, always the voice of reason.

“You could all let me go if you really wanted to. You know that. Nobody is going to argue with all of you if you all agree.”

“We don’t want you to go, man,” Cole said.

“And I don’t want to stay so I guess we’ve got problems.”

“More problems than we can jump over,” Reed added.

“How about we all stop whining for a while and get on with it? We could all still be in high school dreaming of being rock stars instead of actually living our dream,” Nick said. I think they were more words than I’d ever heard him say at once before.

“Maybe that’s preferable to being here right now. At least then I could go two feet without being followed by a hundred people.” Luke huffed and clamped his lips together, like there might be more he would say if he didn’t stop himself.

That was probably a good idea.

We reached our next destination – the arena. The moment the van stopped, Luke pulled open the door and stormed off inside.

Scott was waiting for us, a bemused look on his face as Luke stomped past him. “Where are you going?”

Luke replied by flipping the bird.

Dylan, Reed, and Nick all went silently inside, ignoring Scott. That just left Cole and myself. He hurried up to us. “What’s going on?”

“We had a fight,” Cole replied. He was still mad, the anger rolled off him in waves.

Scott threw his hands up into the air. “Can’t you boys do anything else these days? I left you for ten minutes. Hurry up and get inside.” He turned around and took his own advice, heading for the door.

“Are you okay?” I asked Cole once we were alone.

“I’m just so annoyed at Luke and his attitude. He should be grateful. Out of the billions of people on this earth, only a tiny handful get to do what we’re doing. He should be thankful and just do it. I don’t understand why he wants to quit so bad.”

“It sounds like he’s just tired of it all. I think he misses home. You don’t get much free time.”

“But this isn’t going to last forever. Eventually all our fans will move on to another band, they’ll get sick of us. Then we can do whatever we want.” Cole’s eyes were sad, frustrated at not being able to do anything to fix the situation.

I didn’t know what to say. A part of me really agreed with him because I knew of a thousand people who would easily trade places with them.

But, at the end of the day, we couldn’t walk in Luke’s shoes. He was obviously going through something that we didn’t understand.

I wished I could solve all their problems.