Chapter 1
AS SOON AS THE SONG started, I recognized his voice. How could I ever forget it? That voice still echoed through my dreams, causing me to wake in a cold sweat. If I could, I'd have knocked that radio to the ground and smashed it beneath my feet, shattering it into silence, every little piece destroyed so that Holden King would shut the fuck up and stop torturing me. But, since I was sitting in the back seat of a cab on my way to work, that option was kind of impossible.
"Can you change the channel?" I asked the driver.
"Huh?"
Lyrics about a girl with cherry red lips and a killer smile floated in the air.
"Just change the fucking channel already."
Was he deaf or just stupid?
I had the cherry red lips and I'd kill Holden King with more than my smile if I ever saw him again. That was a certainty. Not just with my smile but with my fists and any weapon I had close to hand.
Three years ago Holden walked out of my life. I'd tried to wipe him from my mind. I'd done everything in my power to exterminate him but he crept back in like a roach infestation. Sometimes a smell, sometimes a glimpse of black hair in the same style. I'd accidentally walk through the wrong neighborhood and see a place we'd gone to eat or a bar we drank at. Times like that, the flood of memories threatened to overwhelm me. My stomach would clench in the most revolting way, which only showed how much I hated him.
When the memories overwhelmed me, I'd do whatever it took to purge them. Drink, party. Sometimes a one-night stand with someone whose name I never bothered to remember.
"You don't like 'Rock Princess'? This song is huge. Huge. It's going to be the song of the year."
I groaned. Not that a cab driver was any kind of music expert but then they do have their finger on the pulse of what the people loved.
What good were all my attempts to forget when that bastard wrote a song punching me right in the wound that had destroyed me? He mined the depths of our relationship for a song and used that to make money. It was a damn good song too. He could make you believe anything when he sang. It almost sounded like he regretted the things he'd done.
I hoped the cab driver was wrong. I couldn't deal with hearing that song everywhere I went.
"I don't like it," I said. "Why have you not turned it off already?"
The driver switched the station to some talk show. He kept humming the tune, though.
This was some kind of hell. I'd died and was paying for my sins and that payment would be hearing that stupid song everywhere I went. "The girl I'll never forget, the girl I'll never get over." What the fuck was that even about? He got over me pretty quick smart. I guess "lying, cheating man-whore" doesn't make for a catchy song. That song would never take off like the sorry story of a love gone wrong but he was the one who made it go wrong. He'd smashed every precious thing we'd had then walked off with his guitar slung over his back like a damn star while I tried to glue all the pieces of my life into some semblance of a living thing.
Holden King.
He was always going to be a star. He’d had that quality about him. Our small hometown sure hadn't been big enough to hold him. We’d always talked about getting out until, a few weeks after we finished school, I woke up to the sound of rocks hitting my window.
I pulled back the curtains to see Holden leaning on the shitbox car he’d been fixing up.
He rushed over to my window when he saw me and I opened it for him.
“Let’s go. Pack your bag and get out of here. If we don’t do it now, we never will.”
All those nights in his room we’d planned this. He'd lay beside me, spinning me dreams of what it'd be like when he hit the big time. I didn't care about the big time, I just liked the feel of his body beside me on those hot summer nights. I'd lay my head on his shoulder and he'd play with my hair. We'd spend hours like that, in his room above his parent's garage. He'd play Johnny Cash on the old stereo and we'd smoke cigarettes, sometimes sip from a stolen bottle of whiskey.
Without hesitating, I’d thrown my things into a bag. Makeup, clothes, boots. The stash of money I’d hidden in the back of the wardrobe. What else did I need?
I wrote a note and left it for my parents. They’d be angry but they’d get over it. They’d banned me from seeing Holden but there was nothing that could keep us apart.
I climbed out the bedroom window and jumped in the car. He had a black eye. I didn’t ask. I didn’t need to. His dad had come home, drunk again. The same old story.
“Whoa, Carlie, we’re doing it.” He grinned at me and started the car, spinning the wheels as we pulled away from the curb.
“Do you think this pile of junk will make it?”
“It’ll make it, just like I’ll make it. I’m going to be a star and you’ll be my princess, right there beside me. My rock princess with your cherry red lips.”
We were all the rock songs came to life. The two crazy kids with heads filled with dreams and only our love to sustain us.
I watched in the rear vision mirror until that town became a tiny speck, my heart thumping with excitement. I’d believed in Holden. As far as you looked, all you could see were paddocks of wheat drying in the sun but Holden's vision was fixed on something much, much further away.
As we drove away, he sang me the song he’d been writing. It’d been a good song. A great song. That song would make him a star.
People had said he was a fool to believe he could make a living as a rock star. It was a crap shoot, a lottery win. Those people were stupid.
Holden's dream of hitting the big time was much more realistic than my dream of being there beside him while he did it. I'd been shed just as easily as he'd shed the small town and the bad haircut. I'd been nothing to him, he proved that over and over again until I got the point.
I curled into the corner of the cab, leaning on the door frame. We were nearly at Trouble. I'd still be late for work but not too late. The sooner I got out of that cab, the better. The cab driver still hummed the song as though it'd seeped into his skin and he couldn't change the channel in his mind. The air in the cab became unbearably thick. Even with the air conditioning on, it was too stuffy for me to breathe. The space contracted around me. I had to escape.
; "Pull up over here," I said.
"But we're not there yet," he said. "It's not much further."
"That's okay," I replied. “I can walk from here."
I handed him the money and jumped out. I gulped in the fresh air, hoping it'd ease the fever of my body. I had to beat Holden King. I had to find some way to let him go. But, even three years later, he could make me feel like I was going to collapse. Maybe I needed to get a knife and hack out that part of my heart where he nestled. That way I could have some peace in this life and move on.
I rushed along the streets to get to the club. Rushing to escape the memories and the pain. I barged into people and knocked them aside. I swerved around old ladies. I dodged the racks of sale clothing lining the footpath and a couple too in love with each other to notice anything else.
I picked up my pace, hoping to outrun this thing.
Because every single shop, every car stereo, every house had the same music blaring out.
They were all listening to it, all getting wrapped in the world of Holden King.
Was there nowhere I could escape “Rock Princess”?
Little did I know that, only one week later, things would get even worse.
Chapter 2