Girls Who Play Guitars

•but you hardly know me•

Kim snorted and grabbed for the tape and the cover. "Chuck it out. Who wants to be reminded of her?"

Before anyone could toss the cassette in the bin, Ellie rescued it from Kim's hands.

"Want us to sign it?" she asked the tall guy, whose expression turned from horror to relief.

"Yeah, that'd be cool. It's Matt. To Matt. Please."

Someone handed Ellie a pen, and she scrawled her name on the insert, before handing it to Meg. "You coming to tonight's show?" she asked the group.

"Slider should be headlining, not those Pommy gits," one of the other guys said pointedly.

Ellie adored her fans.

As they bundled into another taxi, Nolan turned to them from the front seat. "Your fans are great, huh?"

Ellie gave Nolan a small smile and turned to stare out the window. Seeing the demo tape and talking about the Afterblast show caused her stomach to gurgle like a novice yodeller. She'd been thinking about Daniel all day when she should have been thinking about ways to make sure Jessie didn't steal her livelihood from under her boots.

"It's so shit we have to keep being reminded of Jessie everywhere we go," Kim said, shoving Meg—who always liked to sit in the middle—aside so she could clip in her seatbelt.

"Do you reckon Jessie'll go through with it now Brenin's got us a proper lawyer and everything?" Meg wondered before sucking on the last of her cigarette and stubbing it hard out in the ashtray in the console.

"Jessie won't give up where there's money involved," Kim said, settling back in her seat. "You know she could sell our songs to an advertising agency?"

Ellie creased her brow at Kim.

"For car ads  ...  or hamburger joints—"

"She won't be doing any of that," Ellie stated. Her lyrics and music used and abused in a TV ad would be the worst thing she could imagine. Worse than dance mixes. "Brenin will sort it out for us."

"Brenin's having dinner with Glue at a new restaurant in the city later on if you want to go?" Nolan offered as the taxi sped off.

Ellie shook her head and turned to the window again.

Because they weren't headlining, Slider would not be partaking in any extra-curricular activities. They'd be doing their soundcheck.

And Ellie would be staying well out of Daniel's Armstrong's reach.

***

~SLIDER'S DRESSING ROOM, BRISBANE FORUM~

Sporadic, muffled echoes of Will's drum kit burst out across the empty arena. Now and then, Daniel's voice rained out a random verse or chorus, accompanied by Gav's guitar chords. A song started, stopped and started again and every few minutes, a twiddle of a circus intro on an organ showered over the top of everything else.

Ellie lay on the dank smelling couch squeezed into a corner of their dingy dressing room, her boots resting on the arm. Now she'd stopped moving, and the jet lag had settled in, she'd let her mind wander. Daniel was in her proximity. She heard him. Felt him. He was close. She had this new special Daniel radar inside that alerted her senses whenever he was near. And it freaked her out how much she wanted to see him—and avoid him—at the same time.

"I know Glue has a lot of effects and shit"—Meg banged the heel of her boot against the dressing room wall—"but, seriously, why is it taking so long?"