Page 44 of Silver Sweet

Charlie and Beckett share a look I can’t decode, before Beckett tells me, “You need to be careful around him.”

I grimace. “What does that mean?”

“He’s been arrested before. Multiple charges under his name. Assault. Public intoxication. Disorderly conduct. Stuff like that.”

I’m hardly shocked. “Yeah. He’s a drummer of arock band.He parties. Probably gets in fights and does coke.”

“This is reassuring,” Charlie cuts in dryly.

Charlie has done many drugs. He’s not some D.A.R.E representative. But for the past couple years, Beckett has been trying to keep me and Eliot away from anyone who offers us speed, coke, E—party drugs. He even dropped a couple friends who gave Eliot LSD.

Beckett and Charlie moved to New York when they were only sixteen—Beckett to join a ballet conservatory and Charlie because he graduated high school early and wanted to be with his twin. In a way, we all followed Beckett here. I think he feels a responsibility to protect us from the dark aspects of the city.

The question is whether Phoenix St. Pierre is one.

And really, I don’t even know the answer.

Beckett cautions, “Betweenthisand his need to be deceptive about his name, he seems like trouble.”

“You already incite enough on your own,” Charlie says in a more bored tone.

“I agree,” I tell them, pushing off the wall. “But I’m not going to watch my band fade into oblivion. I need him.”

I’m not letting Phoenix go because of a prior arrest. Which means my standards have either lowered or…I know he’s agreatdrummer. And I don’t want to let another St. Pierre get away.

Not again.

10

PHOENIX ST. PIERRE

The pot of coffee won’t brew fast enough. It’s these days I wish I could afford name-brand jug iced coffee or even a capsule coffee machine. I could just chug an energy drink, but I ran out yesterday. Red Bull isn’t cheap either.

Caffeine is a bad habit I can’t kick. I blame it on my shitty sleep schedule, which is not a schedule at all. It’s more like I clasp my hands together and pray the Sleep Gods grant me at least four hours of uninterrupted shuteye.

It’s to the point where if Tom Cobalt were an actual god and had the power to cure my insomnia, I would be kneeling at his feet every night.

That image is not what I fucking need right now.

I pinch and squeeze my eyes shut with rough fingers.

The coffee machine gurgles and steams. The longer it takes, the more likely one of my roommates will come in here. I am avoiding them.

Completely fucking avoiding.

They’re not pissed I’m joining The Carraways. It’s not like that. They understand that I want to play drums and they don’t have a spot for me.

They want gossip.What’s up with Tom? Why can’t he hold a drummer? Does he have anger management problems? Is he an orange juice or coffee guy?That last question was from Neil who, I didn’t know until yesterday, is obsessed with the Cobalt Empire.

I don’t have time or the energy to talk to my roommates, and as of three days ago, I’m legally bound to keep my mouth shut about Tom. And while I’d probably go to jail for any member of Nothing Personal, I’d rather it not be over what Tom Cobalt had for breakfast.

The coffee is taking forever. I eye the door warily.

Our cramped seven-hundred-and-fifty-square-foot apartment has four bedrooms and one bath. The kitchen is as small as my parents’ walk-in closet when I was growing up. And yet this shoebox of a place is home to five young and depraved musicians.

As the coffee brews, I snag the copy ofRolling Stoneoff the counter. Not surprisingly, it’s opened to the one paragraph on Nothing Personal. Neil and Steffi like to read it to each other on the daily as motivation to grind harder—and seeing as how they’ve been dating for four years (and breaking the golden rule of not fucking someone in your band), it’s starting to feel like their weird form of foreplay.

I don’t ask.