13Shots || Imagine Dragons
ROXANNE
“Kay,you know you don’t have to do this, right? You should be hanging out with Matt. You should also be sharing a room withhim, not me.”
Kay shakes her head as she twists the top off the bottle of cheap red wine and pours it into two clear plastic cups next to the complimentary sparkling water that came with the hotel room.
“Matt and I just spent last night sharing a bunk on a bus with a broken air conditioning unit. Trust me when I say we need some space.”
She takes a sip out of her glass and then brings mine over to me.
“Besides,” she continues, “I decided to crash this tour for a few days so I could hang out with you, not just Matt, andalsohe’s supposed to take me out on a date tonight.”
Kay flew down to Chicago from Montreal to meet up with us for a few days. We’ve got a rare night off playing and an even rarer night off the bus, which is in for some much-needed repairs to fix the air conditioning. The atmosphere was getting...rank, to put it mildly—orvachement répugnant, to put it accurately.
Somehow, Cole and I’s fake dating scheme still seems to be working. He hasn’t let himself be alone with me since we kissed, so I still have no idea how he feels about what happened, but I heard actual sighs of relief when he sat down next to me on the bus this morning. JP also ordered us to be toasted with a bus-wide round of espresso. Honestly, I don’t think our acting is anywhere close to Oscar-worthy right now, but everybody seems desperate enough for some harmony that they’re willing to be convinced.
Matt already had Kay up to speed on the scheme, and she volunteered herself for the cause. I knew everyone would expect Cole and I to share a room tonight, which isnotsomething I wanted to put us through, so Kay stepped in and announced we needed a ‘girl time bonding session.’
We’re not really ‘girl time’ people, but we ran with it. We tried to explore the city this afternoon before the heat made us decide we’d rather just hide out in our room. Kay grabbed the wine for a session of what she described as, ‘getting tipsy and bitching about shit.’
“Cheers,mon amie.”
We clink our glasses of Merlot together, and she settles down beside me where I’m sprawled on the king-sized bed.
“I feel bad that we’ve got this room to ourselves when half the crew is sleeping on floors tonight,” I admit.
The four guys in the band have two double rooms between them, but most of the stagehands have been squished in like sardines.
“Yeah, it feels kind of elitist,” Kay agrees. “Matt hates it. He doesn’t want to be one of ‘those bands,’ but I don’t think he realizes that this is how being famous works. I’ve seen it happen to a lot of bands I’ve interviewed. You reach a point where suddenly there are all these new lines you can’t cross, all these new roles you have to fill. At this point, Sherbrooke Station justcan’tsleep on the floor with their roadies, even if they want too. It would make everyone feel weird.”
I nod and keep sipping my wine. I don’t think the full impact of the band’s fame really hit me until this tour. I knew their sales numbers. I knew how many charts they’d topped, but it took actually climbing up on stage with them and hearing thousands of fans stomp out the beat of their songs every night for thepowerof all those facts to hit me.
“By the way,” I ask, “how are things going with you and Matt?”
“They’re good.” Kay takes a gulp of wine and smiles to herself. “Really good. I...For a while, I was in this headspace where I kept expecting them to go badbecausethey were so good, like it wasn’t sustainable, you know? Then it sorted of shifted, and it was just like...if they’re good, let them be good. No use dooming things from the start.”
I can’t stop myself from snorting.
“What?” Kay sounds mildly offended.
“I’m not laughing at you!” I rush to explain. “I’m really happy to hear that. It’s just, dooming things from the start is kind of my thing. Or at least that’s what Cole...”
Kay gives me a curious look and waves for me to go on.
“Never mind.” I brush it off. “I’m not falling for your cunning plan. It’s going to take a lot more than one glass of wine to get me drunkenly rambling about my ex.”
“Well in that case...”
Kay reaches for the bottle and tops us up.
Our drinking and bitching session turns out to involve way more dancing than bitching. Kay starts blasting Imagine Dragons on her phone when we’re halfway through the bottle, and we groove around the hotel room as she starts getting ready for her date night with Matt.
She’s pretty low maintenance, and it only takes her about two songs before she’s good to go. I fill up our glasses again, and we sit back down on the bed to wait. My cheeks feel flushed, and there’s a hazy kind of warmth in my chest.
“You read a lot,” Kay says lazily, pointing at the book I have resting on my nightstand.
I scoff. “Says the music journalist. If you’re not writing, you’re reading.”
