Anna was trying to help Mom, but Mom just made her sit down whenever she tried. Mom’s hair was still the perfect shade of blonde, and she kept it in a short, sensible style that required little fuss or muss. If we were at home, Mom would have a cigarette in her mouth while she worked, but she was being respectful of our house and keeping her vice to brief visits outside. Smoking was the one thing Mom had been an absolute hypocrite about growing up; she’d constantly forbid us to pick up the “nasty habit,” as she called it. When I was eleven, she’d caught me with one of hers. Instead of grounding me, or giving me a slap on the wrist or something, she’d made me smoke it, plus the rest of the pack, and then another pack after that. I’d never been so sick in all my life. Even now, cigarettes made me nauseous.

I was having a beer with Dad and Liam, and Liam was filling us in on a commercial audition that he was sure he’d nailed for a high-end watch company. He really wanted to get the job; he’d heard that he’d get to make out with a model in it.

In my distracted state of homelife bliss, I did something out of habit that I’d been purposely avoiding doing for a while: I answered the phone when it rang. “Griffin? You are alive. Where have you been? I’ve been trying to get a hold of you.”

Hearing Matt’s voice on the other end made me clench my jaw. I wasn’t ready to talk to him yet, but it was too late now. With a shrug he couldn’t see, I told him, “My family is in town. I’ve been busy with them.” It was only a partial lie. True, they’d just gotten here a few hours ago, but I was busy with them.

Matt’s voice instantly changed. “Oh, okay. Well, tell them hi for me, and we’ll catch up soon.”

Great. He was going to want to come over now. “Yep. Will do. Thanks for calling.”

I was about to hang up, but Matt quickly said, “Wait! I wanted to talk to you about rehearsals. We want to get together as soon as possible and start on the next album.”

Now I knew I should have been all gung ho about work to impress both Matt and Kellan, but we’d just fucking gotten home. I needed a few weeks off. And fuck them if they didn’t understand that. When I responded to Matt, my voice came out in a whine. Maybe it wasn’t the best way to deal with him, but I couldn’t help the reaction. “We just finished one. Let’s take a break. Relax.”

The firm, no-nonsense Matt answered me. “We can’t, Griffin. This business is competitive, we have to continuously release new stuff to stay relevant. We need to keep pushing the envelope.”

Irritation ripped up my spine so fast, the hair stood up on my arms. Push the envelope, stay fresh? That was the same shit I’d been saying on tour, when I’d tried to get them to give me five seconds in the sun. Hadn’t meant a damn to them then, so why should it now? “You were fine sticking to the same ole on tour. What’s it matter now?”

My voice echoed my mood, and Matt let out that damn impatient sigh that everyone around me seemed to have mastered. “Griffin…” Just the condescending way he said my name set me off. I wasn’t three, and he wasn’t my dad.

“Don’t ‘Griffin’ me, I have a point and you know it. You guys blew me off, even before the tour, when you flat-out told me no, I couldn’t advance my position. So why should I give you the time of day? What’s in it for me to be a part of this band?”

Silence fell around my home, and I could feel everyone’s eyes on me. Maybe I should have taken this into the other room. Matt was silent a moment before he answered me. “What’s in it for you is what’s always been in it for you—fame, money, and women. That’s all you care about, all you’ve ever cared about, so don’t act like we’re screwing you over by making sure you get exactly what you love. Rehearsal is tomorrow at three. I’ll see you then.”

He hung up the phone before I could respond, and all I could do was stare at the damn thing and wait for my fluctuating mood to even out. Fame, money, and women? Yeah, maybe that had been my goal in the beginning…and maybe it still was now, but…something was missing. I had a hole in me that wasn’t being filled properly, and FMW just wasn’t enough anymore.

Dad was giving me concerned eyes when I put the phone away. “Everything okay?”

Trying not to sound too disgruntled, I told him, “Yeah. Matt was just being a douche is all, like normal. He says hi, by the way, and wants to hang out while you’re in town.”

Dad’s worry faded away as he smiled. My parents both loved Matt to pieces. Matt used to joke that they wished he was their son and not me, but I knew that wasn’t true. Well, I was pretty sure that wasn’t true. I was the coolest person my parents knew. They had bragging rights for being able to say they’d encoded my DNA. They couldn’t say the same about Matt. He was Uncle Billy’s kid through and through. They even had the same stick poking out their assholes.

I considered bailing on rehearsal, but Matt would just hound me until I showed up, and Mom and Dad wanted to go “watch the show.” I told them a few times there wouldn’t be much of one, since the “show” was mainly going to consist of Matt, Kellan, and Evan huddling around a piece of paper covered with lyrics that, to be brutally honest, didn’t make any sense at all.

They insisted on coming though, along with Liam, Chelsey, and the girls, so the whole damn family was packing up to head out to the countryside. Oh well. At least Dawn and Della would get a kick out of running around Kellan’s farm. Okay, he technically didn’t have a farm since the only animals on the property were a couple of stray cats, but it had that rural, rustic, there-are-pigs-in-the-shed feel to it.