Synopsis
Tris
When a spring flower blooms too early, it often wilts while others blossom during their proper season.
That’s me in a nutshell, and what eventually landed me in the nuthouse.
Through necessity, I found a new passion, one that helps mask the darkness by thrusting me into the spotlight.
Each show is a session, ending in a kiss meant for revenge.
He broke me, and I will make sure I do the same to him.
Matteo
Wealth is the very thing most people desire above all else, except those who have it and know the truth in its empty pleasures.
Love, the ultimate luxury, is the one thing that even the wealthy cannot afford.
I lived without it all of my life, and when I found love, I could no longer live with it.
On my journey from then until now, I have accepted my fate and found solace in molding beautiful things that others can love.
I am a broken man, but I’ll make sure all I leave behind is whole.
This is a story about two broken hearts—one danced in dark and one in light—who were both marked by tragedy yet found love, and together, they created a beautiful life.
La Défense Arena
Paris, France
Tris
“You’ve got this, Tris,” Patrick says loud enough so that I can hear him over the roar of the sold-out show in Paris, France, as he gently squeezes the tension from my shoulders.
I look back at him and roll my eyes dramatically, telling him, no kidding.
He smiles the way he does in a way that is meant to calm me. It does. But, what he doesn’t know is that he isn’t calming my nerves; they have been shot for months. What he is doing is giving me a reminder that I need to calm my monsters.
Closing my eyes, I whisper my mantra, “Note by note.”
In a world full of scrutiny and screaming self-doubt, I’ve found solace in blending sounds together, making music, to drown them out.
My monsters are calmed by taking everything note by note.
“You ready to rock, Trouble?” Finn Beckett, bass guitarist from STD, is standing beside me, his arms crossed over his chest, a slight scowl forming a V between his brows as he looks at the stage from the wing.
Finn loves music, but hates being on stage. On the total opposite side of the proverbial guitar pick is Memphis Black, the lead singer of Steel Total Destruction, which happens to be the band we are opening for on our first ever tour. He loves the spotlight.
Sometimes, I feel like Finn, and sometimes, I feel like Memphis.
The highs and lows of being a teenager blows, and so does the fact that our brains aren’t truly mature until we are close to twenty-five years old. My therapist, Dr. Winslow, assures me that once my hormones are balanced a bit more, and my brain syncs up, I will no longer be inclined to define myself by my past choices, or however it is he is treating me.
By then, I will be better.
I’m getting better.
“Always,” I answer.
“Good luck, One.” Billy, another member of STD, smirks.
Billy calls me One; our bass player, Zoey, Two; Mae, our other electric guitarist, Three; and Rain, our drummer, who happens to be River’s daughter, who is STD’s drummer, is Four.
Keanna, her mom, continues messing with Rain’s pom-pom-like pigtails as she winks at me. “These ladies don’t need luck when they have talent and killer style.”
When this whole music thing started, it was supposed to be just me. I was fine in the studio with Uncle Xavier and Tricks. Even with the radio, podcasts interviews, and performances used as promotion when my one solo single released and hit number one on the pop music charts to help promote the upcoming album and tour. The issue? I didn’t pick up the guitar all that quickly, and Patrick, my cousin, aka Tricks, refused to be on stage. His words, “I wanna stand back and watch you fly.”
The problem for me was that the only time I shined in the past year live, and in living color, was when I went off at Seashore on … him and my “cousins” and ended up getting kicked out of school and spending five days and four nights in the nuthouse. No one, aside from my parents and Momma Joe, my grandmother, know that’s where I was, not even my siblings. Everyone thinks Momma Joe took me on a mini vacation.
Dr. Winslow told me I was giving him power by not using his name.
Marcello had left more black roses in my locker, and I’d had enough of the snickerings from his little gutter whores, my second cousins, so I made them eat them. That probably wouldn’t have gotten me kicked out, but when he pulled me off them, yes, both of them, I proceeded to kick the shit out of him. That probably wouldn’t have caused me to be kicked out, either, but then Ms. Pinkertits, the English teacher who I didn’t even see, and the back swing that gave her a black eye sealed the deal.
Not my finest hour.
Honestly, I don’t even remember most of it, but whatever. It still got me kicked out of that hellhole, a hellhole where black roses bloomed every morning and black clouds hung over me all day, inevitably landing me in the nuthouse.
Rage was something I had never felt before that day. Rage of the blinding, amnesia-inducing type. Rage that is so strong that it took Max and Amias tackling me to the ground and pinning me down to tame.
When the rage faded a bit, things still were fuzzy, like a screen full of static on an old TV, filtering the world around me. That lasted for three days, extending my stay at Chateau de Crazy for another day. Unlike the chateaus in the picturesque countryside surrounding the city of Paris, they served pills and not wine. The static gone, the itchy fuzziness softened, anger and pain became like a childhood blanket … the only things that comforted me.
After that, I wrote words that made little sense to anyone but me. Patrick and Kiki polished them and made them marketable, while I was finishing my high school career … online.
Online.
It’s been weeks since I have unblocked him—him being Marc—and not once have I not had to force myself to stop doing so.
Keeping busy has definitely been the key.
Busy.
I feel it, my heart beginning to race like it does whenever I think of him, and it sickens me.
I hate him.
He hates me.
I hate him more.
I take a deep breath then exhale slowly. It calms the racing. Well, the imagery of the act does. I picture the black cloud of fog entering my body through my nose, removing it from the space around me, giving me the ability to … see more clearly. See the path in front of me and not the carnage he caused behind me.
Note by note.
I close my eyes and turn from the stage when the first few notes of the medley that Uncle Xavier and Tricks composed, combining “Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star,” “Row, Row, Row Your Boat,” “Humpty Dumpty,” “London Bridge,” and a few others ending with “Eeny, meeny, Miny, Moe.” All of them combined brilliantly based on something that I scribbled on a notebook during a particularly “cloudy day” where I was trying to make sense of when my childhood ended, and all the monsters came marching in. That scribbling shaped our forty-five-minute performance as the opening act and was pushing our album up the charts all around the world.
I feel Rain and Mae grab my hands and open my eyes. Zoey walks up beside them and rolls her eyes slightly as she takes their hands. It’s time for our pre-performance ritual, which I find annoying sometimes and comforting at other times.