“Easy, Jacob.” Andrew claps him on the back. “Don’t want to burn the marshmallows.”
Yeah, that’s what we should be worried about.
“Why isn’t Pammy here with you?” Jacob slurs. “She’s hot.”
“She has to be on set early,” Andrew whines the last word. “No fun, that girl, sometimes.” Andrew waves the long metal rod with three blackened, oozing marshmallows skewered to the end in my direction. “Back me up, Chase-man. These days all these chicks wanna have a ‘career,’ right? Real men don’t give a fuck if a woman’s got some corporate gig—”
From the corner, Garrett giggles. “What corporate chick’s trying to bang you?”
“You’d be surprised,” Andrew says, not offended in the least. “They wanna go to college or have an acting career, when all I want is someone who looks pretty cooking my damn dinner.”
“With big tits,” Jacob adds.
I gaze up at the stars for a second. If he wasn’t absolutely fucking crazy, Andrew would fit in perfectly with lots of bikers I know.
When I don’t agree with him right away, he pokes me with the sticky end of his skewer. “Right, Chaser?”
I slap the hot metal away. “That sounded like a whole lot of words for, ‘I don’t know how to find a clit’ to me.”
“Nah,” Alvin chimes in. “Sounded more like, ‘I’ve never given a woman an orgasm.’”
“Fuck both of ya!” Andrew throws his arms open wide, accidentally flinging his marshmallows to the side. “Bring me a woman right now. Any woman. I’ll strum her clitty to orgasm in five seconds flat.”
Jacob points his bottle at Andrew. “Is Pammy a screamer? I feel like she’s a screamer.”
Andrew scratches his chin, settling in for what I’m sure will be a lengthy story about Pamela’s octave range.
Before he opens his mouth, I remind Jacob, “You were supposed to keep the partying to a minimum this weekend.”
“Chill the fuck out, Chaser,” Garrett slurs. “You’re not the boss of us.”
Since he’s regressed to the same arguments an eight-year-old would use, it’s a safe bet Garrett’s already killed a bottle on his own.
“Every rock star knows true binge-drinking is an artform.” Jacob flaps his arms in the air, leaning too close to the edge of the building for my comfort. “And I am motherfucking Michelangelo!”
“Preach, brotha!” Andrew reaches up to high-five Jacob, sending him teetering closer to the edge.
This is fucking ridiculous. I elbow Andrew out of the way.
“That’s great.” I loop my arm around Jacob’s waist and drag him off the ledge. “Let’s go downstairs. The hotel’s ready to throw us out.”
“No!” Jacob protests. “We’re having fun.”
“I think you’ve had enough fun.”
“I won’t let them throw you out, Chaser,” Andrew pleads. “Don’t go.”
“Bro, we have two more shows to get through,” I remind him.
Jacob tips his bottle back, drains the contents, and tosses it against the brick wall, where it shatters. “Need to find another one.”
“I bet Robbie has a fresh bottle waiting for you in your room.”
He stares at me with glassy eyes then scowls past me at Robbie. “Nu-uh, Val told him to keep me away from booze.” Jacob’s mouth pulls into a goofy grin, and he points at Andrew. “But Andrew hooked us up!”
Andrew pinches his fingers together. “He may have had a little bit of coke too.”
“That’s great. Very helpful. Thanks, Andrew.”
“We were celebrating your awesome show tonight.”
“I got you covered, Jacob,” Robbie says. “Come on back downstairs.”
Hopefully, Jacob passes out; otherwise, I’m prepared to knock him out.
The next afternoon, Mallory and I are headed back to our room after finishing lunch with Audrey and Doug when Jacob finally makes an appearance.
“Are you all right, Jacob?” Mallory asks.
He peers at her over his sunglasses. “Where’s the coffee?”
“We’ll have some sent up,” Mallory promises. “You don’t look too good.”
“You’re looking foxy, Mallory.” He grins at her.
“Still high, bro?” I ask.
“Come on,” Mallory steers him into our room and goes over to the phone to order room service.
“What the fuck, Jacob?” I look him up and down. “We have to be on stage in a couple of hours and you smell like warmed-over death.”
“We might have to cancel.”
I stand there and absorb the shock of his suggestion. We’ve never canceled a show. No matter how shitfaced we’ve been in the past, we always pulled ourselves together so that our shows never suffered.
“Jacob, last night was one of our best and biggest performances, and you want to blow off tonight’s show?” He has to be out of his damn mind.
“It fucking sucked and you know it,” he rasps.
“What?”
“Dude, I choked. I was awkward and could barely get any words out. I know you noticed.”
“We were all a little nervous, Jacob. My first solo wasn’t great. But come on, think of the reaction we got for ‘Queen of the Road.’ How many times have we seen a band perform a new song just to have the crowd stand around and scratch their heads?”