Worlds Apart

Chapter Eighteen

I was awoken by a hand on my shoulder. At first it was gentle, rubbing little circles, to which I just responded by giving a rather complaining groan and turned my head in the other direction.  Sometimes I was quite unwilling to actually wake up – well, most of the time.

The hand only responded by losing all that tenderness and giving me a rough shake instead. Paired with it came with a voice snapping, “Jude wake up. You’re drooling on the board.”

That was enough to wake me into full consciousness.

Well, not quite, but it did have me blinking groggily in response as I straightened. Between rubbing my eyes, I threw daggers at Cash through a glare. “Fuck off,” I mumbled.

Instead of feeling the need to respond or appearing insulted, Cash just brushed his long hair behind his ears as he too straightened – satisfied that I was awake now. And it was done only to send me the most pointed of looks before tipping his head subtly behind him.

Although I would have been quite content to glower at my producer until I was fully awake, I knew enough to know subtly wasn’t his strong suit and could only follow the nod with my eyes – making sure they were narrowed, of course. If someone was to wake me up, they better have coffee because I was liable to start ripping people to shreds with my hands and words. Cash should know that by now.

My slightly murderous thoughts were halted when I caught sight of the flock at the door.

It was only then when I realized Cash’s words to me hadn’t been to get a reaction. I truly had been drooling on the board. There was a crusty line tracing down my chin.

And there were photographers in my studio.

Brilliant.

I’d completely forgotten about them – as I usually did. I’d done an interview the day before and here were the photographers to do the follow up. We were doing it here after my flat out refusal to go to some studio for hours for just some fucking magazine. They decided that they could do the whole ‘look at them hard at work’ shot instead, because that was the only thing that I was likely to agree to.

Out of the corner of my eye I could see the empty bottles that littered the desk that Cash and I had pushed to the wall when we’d got here. For once I could say that they were mostly water bottles. At least when it was only Cash and I the road to the straight and narrow seemed simpler – when we were working of course. Although that didn’t speak for the empty bottles of booze that were mixed in as well, not to mention the gin one at my feet that my bare foot was brushing against. That paired with the state of me it probably wasn’t looking to good.

To me, though, the studio looked almost surgically clean. It was in complete order with the gleaming hardwood floors and its shiny surfaces that were cleaned whenever I ventured outside. However I’d just finished up a couple month stretch of grunging it up at Valley Sound, my opinion was bound to be slightly skewed.  

Cash had his eyebrows raised, obviously amused at the state they found me in and the fact I was still blinking in confusion. I bet they’d already taken a picture – it’d be just my luck for the story to be turned around to be a cover piece on my apparent lifestyle spiral.

When no one else bothered to break the silence, it fell to me to slowly say, “Hello?”

That woke them out of staring at me… somewhat. I was starting to feel like some tropical bird on display at a zoo with the way I was being perceived by them.

The one that was holding the black equipment bags just blinked, remaining rather star struck by the very pedestrian situation. Did they send the new guys to do my shoot? People should know better than that, I could destroy them if I was in a mood – and had in the past. I was what they called a “difficult” job.