I chuckle as I slap her ass, bracing myself against Pete while leaning against Lucky. “It wasn’t a thing until you, sugar. Your pussy’s just that fucking good.”
“Damn straight it is,” she says with a giggle as she reaches up and removes Norm’s blindfold and ball gag. “Now you all betterget to unchaining me or else cleanup is going to consist of the four of you licking your own cum off of every inch of my body.”
Smirking because that’s not even close to a threat, I raise an eyebrow at our sweet boy as he tries to catch his breath and says, “I’m game, let me lose.”
“Give me fifteen to rebound,” I groan as Luck and I pull out of Leo. “Then I will happily cover you in my spunk so we can make that happen anyway.”
The most satisfying, most comforting and peaceful feeling comes over me as I watch my people smile and laugh, as they love each other and me with everything they’ve got, all of us collapsing into the too small hotel bed together while that feeling surrounds all five of us.
But even as we cozy up for a while, holding each other and making sure everyone is touching in some way before we drift off to sleep, I can’t shake the tiny shred of fear that’s still lingering in the back of my mind.
I’m not sure if it’s personal insecurities and low self esteem, or if it’s a real feeling of dread but I can’t shake it, not completely. Things were great like this before, right before the other times our entire world was flipped upside down, and I don’t know why I should think this would be any different.
We’re owed that, that’s fucking why, but the universe doesn’t work that way.
And neither do my fucking instincts.
36
LEONOR
Bouncing on the balls of my feet, I wring my hands and watch from the shadows as the venue continues to fill with warm bodies and the buzz of excitement.
Holy shit.
If you’d have asked me about ten months ago if I thought I’d be standing backstage at the Fillmore, waiting to go out with The Ravens to play in front of a packed house, I’d have told you to get fucked.
That’s exactly what I’m doing, though.
Lucky didn’t have any trouble getting in contact with the SummerFest coordinators or convincing them to let us play after our hiatus. He said theyjumpedat the chance to have us headline even if the period of time for promoting wasn’t very long.
It was about a month.
A little less, actually, more like three weeks between getting our photos back from Rory and standing here right now, and to say I’m humbled by the response would be an understatement.
Especially without a record label backing us.
Vintage was very supportive, they were happy to see us back together and working on new music, but apparently minimal contact and not holding up our end of things despite the circumstances was enough for them to terminate our contract. Without ever notifying any of us.
Officially breaking from them was something we’d talked about doing once our own studio was up and running, as soon as we were able to independently produce our next album, so it wasn’t some great disappointment. But it did leave us in limbo for a bit.
Thankfully, Lucky’s background in law came into play and after a few meetings with Vintage, a lawyer Keyton recommended to us, and some incredibly solid research from my boys, we obtained the full rights to our first three albums, and everything attached to them.
While we’re all excited about what this means, about what it’ll do for us as a band, it also left us with very little time and even less of a team to push this show.
Keyton was a big help. Shockingly. Not that he’s such a shithead he’s totally cold hearted and wouldn’t lend a fellow musician a hand, I guess my expectations of him are just that low. But he helped a lot. He let us plaster Mikey’s with posters the way we used to, handed out flyers to everyone who came in, and he gave us the number of a PR company who was thrilled to take us on.
Aside from that, we pounded the pavement like the old days.
Morbid Ink and Inked in Sin started playing our shit on rotation and telling everyone who walked through their doors about ourcomeback show. Mother Loves, Stitches and a few of the other shops in town began doing the same, even the hardware store Lucky loves hung a promo photo in their window. Mark got us a few spots on the local rock stations and podcasts, Pete had Kane come all the way out to do a full episodeon us. One where we publicly discussed everything that has happened to us in pretty great detail. He’s the only one we’d ever do that with because he’s our friend and Kane was kind enough to schedule the episode to go live tomorrow morning after the show in hopes of avoiding any insane stunts tonight.
I’m not holding my breath.
Our presence in every inch of this city picked up and started a buzz, one that could easily go south at the drop of a hat but even with the stir—-and anxiety—we created, I was worried it wouldn’t be enough.
I was completely convinced the world had forgotten about us, that all of my shit over the last few years hit a reset button in the worst possible way. It’s been such a whirlwind from start to finish, deciding that now is the time to record new music and get us back in front of the masses after nothing but radio silence or negative publicity, and I couldn’t see this playing out in any way but disastrous.
Yes, our music suddenly got a surge in streaming on all the various platforms.
