Page 1 of More Than Scars

Chapter One

Bowie

“I hate you!” Though I hissed it beneath my breath, several heads turned our way, which just made me duck my head and cringe away from the prying eyes.

“Shouldn’t that be my line, since you made it through to the next round of auditions, while I’ve been dismissed with athankyou very muchand a fifty-dollar gift certificate to Bryson’s, which we both know I will spend on picks and strings.”

“Stop stringing so tight, and you won’t break them so often,” I grumbled. “And I still hate you, ‘cause now I’ve got to sit here for who knows how long, and I’m fuckin’ starving.”

“Told you to grab something from the diner when we stopped.”

“I prefer my breakfast sandwiches without roach carcasses or rat droppings, thank you very much. That place had a C rating in the window.”

“It’s a bit run down, true, but the bacon, egg, and waffle sandwich I had wasn’t half bad.”

“Let’s hope you still feel that way in a few hours once it’s had the chance to fully digest,” I said. “And don’t even think about ditching me here and coming back for melater, because we both know your definition oflaterdirectly correlates to how many rabbit holes you wander down and how many human distractions cross your path. If I hear one more,sorry I’m late, I had this cute little twink pinned to the wall,I am going to pin you to the wall, line up all your exes, and let them use you as a piñata.”

“That’s cold, brutha,” Tony grumbled, a little shiver going through him at the thought. “Seriously, fuckin’ cold.”

“So was dragging me down here on my one day off this week!”

Yes, I was pouting.

Yes, I was sitting there with my arms crossed, staring at the floor, wishing the shadows were thicker or darker or however the fuck you described shadows. Wished people would stop turning to look at me too. It was the number one reason I hated going out in public. Okay, maybe the number two reason, the first being the trio of slashes that bisected my cheek, curved over my nose, and ended with the small scars on my chin. Those weren’t even the worst of them, but they were the ones people could see, and once they had, the fuckers never quit staring.

Like the red-headed bastard sitting in the row of chairs in front of us. Every now and again he’d turn around and try to make eye contact with me while I kept my head tipped so that my long hair spilled across my cheek, coveringmost of the destruction there. It was a good thing I liked to wear it long, or I’d have truly been fucked after the accident happened.

“Hey guys, catering has arrived, they’ll have lunch set up in about thirty minutes,” the stage manager in charge of auditions announced. “In the meantime, we’d like to have Eric Breeze on stage and Bowie James in the wings.”

My stomach gave its loudest grumble yet when my name was called, which just added to my irritation. Fortunately, I was no stranger to playing pissed off, though it didn’t used to be that way for me. I’d always played for the love and absolute joy of having my fingers on a fretboard, the feel as familiar to me as my own skin. My earliest memories were filled with music and a noisy home where there was always an instrument being played.

My old man sang in a band that had a classic rock vibe to it, though they still worked in the heavy stuff from time to time. My mom played the piano, well, it was more than that. She’s a professional concert pianist. And my Uncle Ray, who’d lived with us for as long as I could remember, was my old man’s twin and the bass player in his band. They were always jamming, working on new songs and perfecting the old ones, their bandmates roaming in and out at all times of the day and night. We never even locked our doors, there was no point. Someone was always awake, someone was always busy doing something, especially once my older siblings were old enough to no longer have a curfew.

Drama, ballet, and K-pop bands had been their area of focus, while mine had always been my guitar. Standing in the wings, listening to Eric play his second audition song, I knew I could do better than him. That wasn’t ego speaking, that was my honest assessment of my abilities in comparison to his.

But did I want to outplay him?

That was the question I was wrestling with as I stood beside the stage manager.

It had been three years since I’d played with a band. My first band, formed back in high school with the three men who I’d thought I was as close to as I was to my siblings. We’d skipped out on our high school graduation in order to play a series of gigs in Portland and wound up living over the bar.

We’d come so close to breaking out, until a man suffering a heart attack behind the wheel side-swiped my Harley and sent me careening through a plate glass window. We’d both lived, for which I was grateful, most days, but those band brothers of mine hadn’t been willing to wait for me to recover enough through physical therapy before they replaced me.

Could I really go through that again?

Mayyyyyybe.

My gut clenched as I stepped out onto the stage, though whether it was from hunger, fuckin’ Tony and his goddamn shithole of a diner, or nerves, I couldn’t say.

“You’re up,” the stage manager said, waving me out there as Eric headed to the back.

I knew it would be a ballsy move to play something I’d written, but I hated playing other people’s songs and was proud of the music I’d created. If I was going to go down in flames, then I was going to do it being true to myself. Launching into Corrosion of Sanity, one of the first songs I’d written once I’d rehabbed enough that I could make my fingers move along the frets sufficiently enough that music, instead of screeching, came out of the amp.

Closing my eyes, I poured all the sorrow, all the pain, and all the frustration I’d felt during that time period into the song as I was playing it and let it completely carry me away. I never looked at them and was too scared to try to read their expressions, especially if the lights revealed my scars. If I’d actually planned to do this instead of being dragged out of my bed, fuckin’ Tony, I would have taken the time to use stage makeup the way I typically did when I performed. Yeah, the whole gothed-out look didn’t exactly fit me, but it sure as hell kept people from whispering about me.

Hated when they did that shit.

Bastards.