“Yeah, I’m easy either way,” he replies.
I look at West. “And you?”
“I’m down with the bonus, so yeah, for sure.”
I shove my fingers through my hair as I fight the urge to scream. This isn’t what we’d agreed but I’m the odd one out and am going to have to cave. In the ten years we’ve been together, we have avoided any major fallout by compromising and working together to come to agreements. Over the past couple of months, Van’s grown moodier than usual and has started quite a few arguments. There’s something going on with him but he refuses to discuss anything whenever I try to get him to open up.
Throwing my arms up, I concede. “Fine, we’ll do this.”
“Great, I’ll let the label know,” Tom says and then eyes me. “You got any songs ready to go?”
Van and I tend to do most of the writing for the band but we haven’t been working on anything together lately. “I’ve got a couple I’ve written.” Looking at Van, I raise my brows. “You got anything?”
He seems cagey, as if he’s holding something back. Shaking his head, he says, “No.”
I narrow my eyes at him, wondering what is going on with him. “We’ll start tomorrow,” I say, and am relieved when he nods. Thank fuck, because Van is the master songwriter of our group. For a moody prick that doesn’t talk much, he has some deep shit inside him that seems to only come out when we’re writing together.
“I’ll be here at eight tomorrow morning.” Once the words are out, I turn and leave. I can’t be in the same room as any of them at the moment.
Needing something to calm me down, I head to see the one person who never fails to bring me some peace.
* * *
“Hey, Princess.”
Claudia turns and smiles at me. She’s madly typing something on her laptop at the kitchen table but she immediately gets up and comes to me. “Hey, big brother,” she says as she throws her arms around me in a big hug. When she’s finished hugging me, she takes a step away from me and frowns. “What’s wrong?”
My sister always did have some kind of special intuition; she always knows when I’m not quite right. “How long have you got to listen?”
“For you, all the time in the world. You know that.” She cocks her head. “You want coffee for this or something stronger?”
Taking a seat at the table, I say, “Coffee.”
She nods and gets to work. “So spill.”
I sigh. “It’s the band . . . no, it’s mainly Van . . .”
Claudia doesn’t have much patience for Van. Groaning, she asks, “Oh God, what has he done now?”
“He’s off at the moment, has been for a little while now. Probably ever since that bitch fiancé of his did the dirty on him.”
“Is he moodier than usual?”
“Yeah, and it’s like he’s trying to provoke fights with me all the time. He never used to be like that with me. And now he’s pushed the band to bring forward our production schedule for the next album.”
She frowns; she knows how important a break is to me at the moment. “That sucks. I wonder what’s going on in that head of his.”
“Fuck knows, and God help us when he explodes because he’s been keeping shit tight for too long now.” I take the coffee she hands me as she sits at the table.
“So no break now?”
I shake my head. “Nope, no break. So that trip you and I had planned to the Whitsundays will need to be postponed.”
Waving me off she says, “That’s all good. I was going to cancel on you anyway.”
It’s my turn to frown now. We’ve been planning this trip for months and she’s been so excited for it that I’m confused as to why she’d cancel on me. “Why?”
A strange look crosses her face. It’s not one I recall seeing before but it reminds me of the looks Van gives me when he’s avoiding giving me a straight answer about something. “I’ve got too much stuff going on at uni. I can’t fit a trip in.”