The strong bassline pounds in my chest, the music becoming a heartbeat all its own as it courses through me. Bodies move around me like an unruly ocean, and I’m lost at sea. Sometimes I hate this feeling, disappearing into the crowd, being nameless and faceless in the dark, pulsing lights of the club. Other times, I crave it like oxygen. For a few brief seconds I’m not a member of the biggest rock band on the planet. I’m not the guy whose face is plastered on magazines and posters and t-shirts. I’m not the person who lays awake at night waiting for the phone call that one of my best friends is dead by their own reckless hand.

I lick my dry lips and lift my drink to them, savoring the burning taste of alcohol on my tongue as I throw the shot back.

“Benji!” A familiar voice breaks through the loud drone of club noise. I glance over my shoulder to find Cooper pushing his way through the crowd. He gets surprised and excited looks from people as he shoves them out of the way. Yes, you just got elbowed by a rock star.

“Coop,” I greet him, holding my fist up for a bump when he reaches me.

“What are you doing down here? Come up to VIP,” he says, grabbing my arm and tugging me without waiting for my response.

We get even more wide-eyed looks as he drags me through the horde of bodies toward the stairs that lead to the VIP level. People take in my long blond hair, pulled into a messy bun on the top of my head, the tattoos covering my arms, and they realize who I am, but not soon enough to get a piece of me before I’m whisked away.

Ten years and most days it still feels like a dream. If I could go back in time and tell the nerdy thirteen-year-old hiding in the janitor’s closet to keep from getting the shit kicked out of him that one day he’d be a millionaire, playing keyboard for a chart-topping band, he wouldn’t believe it.

The way things are going, it won’t be true for long. Thoughts of what’s happening to the band are what drove me out of my quiet apartment tonight, dead set on finding as many distractions as possible. Even if Jude manages to not snort his way to an early grave and Lincoln doesn’t “accidentally” cut himself too deep again and bleed out, we still have the little problem of Lando being unable to write music anymore. It’s starting to feel like one way or another, Downward Spiral isn’t going to make it into the new year, which is only a few weeks away.