Decked with Holly Read Free

playing music. Truthfully, Tim and Chris aren’t just friends—they’re family. That’s what happens when you travel across the country together in a tour bus . . . you connect with your band . . . unless someone “accidentally” takes the last can of Coke in the minifridge on the hottest strip of road between Las Vegas and Los Angeles, denying you a caffeine rush that you desperately need, and you snap.
    Unless bodies are dumped in Middle of Nowhere, Nevada, it’s not possible to spend that much time with two other guys and walk away as casual acquaintances or people who can be described merely as “coworkers.”
    But as much as I love my job, it’s still work. Grueling work where the hours bleed into each other until you can’t tell one eighteen-hour day from another. It’s a grinding job where you can never rest and you can never look as tired as you feel. Nobody wants to see an exhausted rock star rubbing blearily at his eyes and croaking about how if he is expected to handle a photo shoot, a rehearsal, an interview, and a recording session before noon, so there damn well better be Starbucks within arm’s reach. Nobody wants to hear that performers work damn hard to look laid-back or that there’s a point when it becomes impossible to tell just how little energy you have left since you’ve been running on empty for so long. That’s the scariest part: when you’ve deluded yourself into thinking that if you can just have one more double-shot espresso, it’ll be fine.
    Because at some point, most people crack. If you’re lucky, that won’t include shaving your head and attacking parked cars with umbrellas or going on weeklong benders that result in a long series of stints in rehab. But that aching, gnawing pressure that comes from working single-mindedly for a nebulous concept called success . . . it can’t keep building forever without some sort of a release. Eventually, there has to be an outlet for the pressure, which ironically is what music used to be for me before it became my job. My foolproof method of relaxation now keeps me up at night with the guys, pacing recording studios, and obsessing over every minute detail of our careers.
    Which is why when Tim called out, “Okay, let’s take it from the top, everyone!” instead of nodding and leading into the song on the drums, I found myself setting down my drumsticks and massaging at the pounding headache beneath my temples.
    â€œTim, I’m calling a group meeting.”
    That got his attention fast. Something that doesn’t happen often when Tim goes into full work mode. In fact, the only thing that can consistently break through Timothy Goff’s famed concentration is a call from his boyfriend, Corey O’Neal. But since they’re still in the happy, chipper stage of a fresh relationship, despite the long-distance challenge, it’s hard to know how long even that will work.
    Tim set down his guitar and Chris rubbed his left eye, a sleepy gesture that he always makes when we’ve been pushing too hard for too long. Not that he’d ever admit it. Tim’s a workaholic and Chris refuses to say anything because he doesn’t want to slow anything down or hold anyone back. Maybe that’s why we work so well as a band: All of us are paranoid that we’re not pulling our weight. Except it also meant that Chris was never going to set down his guitar and demand some time off. Which left it up to me.
    â€œI need a break.”
    I blurted it out before I could convince myself to keep my mouth shut. One moment of hesitation and the part of me that had busted my ass for years would point out that the higher you rise the harder you fall. That I should keep my head down a little longer, slog through just one more brutal week laying down tracks for our upcoming EP . . . then the promotional period before the release . . . and the concert tour after.
    My