Her Song

27 - Come Fly With Me

Josh looked at his phone again and swallowed hard. "I guess you may have had more than a few things winding you up."

"What the hell's so interesting?" I gave his phone a hard look. His eyes darted from his phone to me, to Gray and Ace and then back again. Gray and Ace were still deep in conversation, focused intently on the phone in Ace's hand.

"Errrrr..."

"Just fucking tell me already." The way I clenched my teeth did nothing to ease the pounding of my head.

"Just a couple of online articles about our show last night."

"Were the reviews bad? Did they hate us?" Like I needed one more thing to pile on to the shit show of the night before. I took a shaky sip from the bottle in my hand.

"No! They thought we were great." The fact he left the but unsaid, didn't mean I couldn't hear it. I heard it all right and without conscious thought I reached for his phone.

I don't know what I expected to see, probably some hideous disastrous news of some kind, my lingering hangover was feeding my sense of doom. What I actually saw in front of me was surprisingly tame for online gossip. Someone had managed to snap a picture of me, Kim, Rich and Minty. My expression was one I'd never really seen in the mirror before – utterly blank with nothing but a faintly superior curl of my lip to stop me from looking like a wax work. Kim's smile was more of a grimace, Rich was smirking smugly, the camera had managed to pick up the evil glint in his eyes and of the four of us it was only Minty who showed any genuine happiness in her expression. Of course whoever had written the grubby little tidbit of gossip hadn't been much interested in that aspect. Oh no, they were far more concerned about sharing with the interested public that Rich and I both happened to be dating sisters and not just any sisters but the ridiculously wealthy Beaumaris sisters – heiresses to an airline fortune.

It could have been so much worse. So, so much worse than what was essentially a stupid little piece of fluff but everything about it infuriated me. There was no mention of my band's actual performance. No mention of the very real job Kim did as one of our managers just an overly gushing reference to the wealthy background that she did her best to downplay. And how could I forget the images of Rich showboating like a mofo, using every opportunity, no matter how random, to push his social media career and notoriety in the press now that his actual music career was gurgling toward the drain of oblivion?

"Woah. Take it easy mate!" Josh plucked the phone from between my clenching fingers and gave it a once over as if he was afraid I'd crushed it. I would have snorted if I'd had the energy. I might have been pissed but there was no way I was capable of hulking out and crushing a cell phone with my bare hands. It would have been a nice party trick to have but no, I was not Bruce Banner.

Josh edged away from me slightly and gave me a sidelong glance before he said, "So I guess we know how Kim scored us those upgrades on our flights and got us lounge access in London, huh?"

"It looks that way." I stretched my legs out and contemplated my boots. Eye contact was completely overrated.

"You didn't know?" Josh spun his phone between his fingers like some kind of oversized fidget spinner.

"No, I didn't know." And that's what stung. Not the slightly sleazy implication in the article that Kim and Minty were slumming it with the trashy musician Williams brothers or even the disgusting way Rich had assumed I'd latched on to Kim for her money like he had with Minty. Hell, I knew those things weren't true, at least where they concerned Kim and me – I couldn't speak for Minty and what her reason for hooking up with Rich was. No, what had stung like a bitch and had sent me stumbling out into the night in search of tequila wasn't that Kim's family was far wealthier than I could have ever imagined, it was that her family, their wealth and their status was something that had affected her deeply and she hadn't trusted me enough to share that with me.