lost in control. β bad omens β 04
adult content β minors do NOT interact.
Briar.
Have you ever tried to rescue a murderous mind?
Real psychopaths chase, relentlessly, the chemical relief: dopamine, serotonin, adrenaline born from the very deaths they cause, from the pain they provoke, from the suffering they impose on those they consider inferior. Deep down, their narcissistic minds convince themselves that this is the perfect way to organize their own chaos, to escape the insanity of their own brain, to cross through their own pain by making it bleed in someone else.
Why would someone like that accept being cured, if they believe they have already found, on their own, a way to deal with themselves?
It's exactly what happens with addicts.
The people around us try, at any cost, to keep us sober. They believe their love can compare to the brutal rush of a few grams of cocaine in the body. And we wished it were true, that it were that simple, that this comparison weren't so extreme, so selfish. But it isn't. Because, in the end, the cycles repeat. Addicts also hurt those around them by putting their own pleasure first. They also believe that this is the easiest way to silence their own mind, while, little by little, they destroy the affection and trust of those who still try to stay.
Neither of these two minds finds a cure. Because it doesn't matter if it's alcohol, drugs, sex or death; when addiction inhabits a sick mind, it doesn't go away.
It didn't matter how much I tried, how much I forced some kind of self-control. It didn't matter the extreme measures, like locking myself at home, hiding my own money, physically punishing myself, accepting losing people as if it were an inevitable part of the price. It didn't matter how many times I convinced myself that I was ready, that I could come back, stay sober, rebuild something that still resembled a life.
I was weak.
Too weak to ask for help. Trapped in the illusion that, this time, I could manage alone, but alone I always gave in. Every time my own mind put me to the test, every time another trigger surfaced, I broke.
And I was fucking on the verge of exploding.
I came out of the bathroom after long minutes staring at myself in the mirror, as if trying to pull some answer from my own reflection. When I came back, the studio was already empty. Everyone had gone home, even after the chaotic rehearsal, especially after Noah tested every limit of my sanity with his demands. He insisted, repeatedly, that my voice wasn't hitting the right note, making me repeat the same verse more than eight times.
Fine by me.
Deep down, he wasn't completely wrong. I had spent four months without touching a microphone, without any vocal preparation whatsoever, and the more screamed verses of our songs still scratched my throat since the last show. I hated admitting it, hated even thinking about it and I would never give him that satisfaction.
But yes, I needed to rehearse more.
I sat on the lower bench, near the pedestal holding the microphone, and let my old guitar rest on my lap. I ran my fingers over the cracks in the wood, over the worn-out stickers. I smiled faintly remembering that it had been the first thing I bought with my own money, ten years ago. It wasn't a good brand, nor did it sound perfectly in tune, but it was still the closest thing to something truly mine that studio held, now that almost everything that belonged to me had been discarded.
Towel, picks, photographs, my notepad⦠none of it existed there anymore. And, suddenly, that place that had once been my workspace felt strange, as if I no longer recognized anything in it. As if I were just a displaced presence, lost inside it.
"There are scars that never ever show themselves. You can get when you're left alone too long in hell." I said softly, strumming a chord on the guitar. "They tried to keep in the secrets that you wouldn't tell. But they just stripped you for parts you had to sell."
We had written that song together, for our second studio album. Every line I sang brought the memories of the two of us back, sitting side by side, with an old notebook between our hands, trying to give shape to loose thoughts. He had longer hair back then, falling over his round face, hiding half of the shy smile that appeared whenever he praised my effort.
Things were already complicated, I already carried my own torments, but everything seemed simpler when seen through his eyes. Because he wasn't even half the shadow he had become nowβ¦
What did I do?
"Well, if I'm there to catch you when you fall," I sang with a breaking voice, felt beneath my eyes go suddenly wet. "You'll have a friend down in hell after all."
When I lifted my head, I stopped my attention mid-air when I noticed a body staring at me from the door. I straightened my posture immediately, sniffled and wiped below my eyes, miserably trying to hide that Noah's presence at that moment had thrown me off.
"I didn't know you were hereβ¦" I said quickly, positioning my arm under the guitar. "Were you here long enough to say if there's anything I can improve? I think my throat is recovering its stamina."
His eyes stayed fixed on me in an unsettling way. Noah was leaning against the door with his arms crossed, pale fingers gripping his hoodie with the same force he used to lock his jaw.
"Chris asked for a meeting with both of us." he replied, ignoring everything I had asked before. "Now."
Swallowing my words, I nodded. Noah had already left the room without saying anything else to me; I got ahead of myself, placing the guitar on the stand beside me and rising from the chair. Whatever it was our manager wanted to discuss at this point in the game, from Noah's face it certainly wasn't anything pleasant.
I walked into the meeting room with cold hands and a tight chest.
Christopher was at the head of the table, wearing thin-framed glasses and hair combed with an excess of gel. He was a young man of 38 who had found something to inject his inheritance into, but our label was still crawling compared to the competition. One year we turned a profit with tours and record sales, but the next the drop was drastic and we needed to save on everything down to toilet paper. Things would be easier if they used the fact that it had open capital to invest, but Noah had refused countless times to use the advantages of his economic privileges and his family for a greater good, like saving the company he worked for.
"Briar!" Chris said, pulling his attention from his phone and giving an excited slap on the table. "I hadn't had a chance to talk to you yet, had I? When you arrived, you all went straight to the festival and it was such a rush I couldn't keep up to see how you were doing."
I smiled, nodded and sat down in the empty space at the table, coincidentally facing Noah.
"I arrived and went straight to the airport, I couldn't stop by here to greet you before. I'm sorry for my lack of manners."
"Don't worry about that sweetheart, how are you feeling?" he asked, genuinely interested. That was a good question. "I feel fine, I think. I didn't have the best performance on stage, according to my professional colleague, but I think I can fix that before the next show."
I was so nervous I was gripping my jeans under the table with my nails.
"That's exactly why I called this meeting with you two. I understand that since Briar's return there's been a somewhat serious communication breakdown between you two. Am I wrong?" Chris asked, raising his eyebrows and dividing his glances between us.
"On my end everything is fine, but something has genuinely been bothering Noah." Our gazes crossed immediately and I could hear the grinding of his teeth from that distance.
"Briar's hiatus affected the band as a whole," he finally opened his mouth. "We suffered an endless wave of hate online, they speculated about our character, started attacking me, making things up about⦠about my involvement with her."
"Involvement?" I shot back immediately. "You're calling our 9-year relationship an involvement?"
"That's not the point of this conversation, Briar!"
"Then say what is, once and for all!" I said.
"I brought the proposal about leaving the band to you, but you refused with an endless list of ridiculous arguments about copyrights. So nothing fairer than bringing the matter to Chris; he settles once and for all who's right about this and that's the end of it."
So the idea for the meeting had actually been his? As if everything that had been thrown in my face since I got back weren't enough, he still wanted to pull the rug out from under me?
"Noah, are you losing your mind?" Chris's voice surprised me. "What kind of absurd idea is this, removing a vocalist from the band right after her return? Wasn't it exactly Briar's absence that caused all that mess online? You should be worried about strategies to clear your names, not about a loss of this magnitude."
"Don't you know him, Chris?" I provoked, without looking away from the furious irises fixed on me. "Don't you know that Noah hasn't reached the stage of adult life where he handles things with maturity? He'd rather keep being a coward, running from me like a little mouse, than look me in the face like a professional man."
From his flared nostrils, I could feel the feverish rage he was in.
"I'm the coward? But you're the one hiding behind an addiction because you can't face your shitty life with a sober face, Briar!"
"SHUT YOUR GODDAMN MOUTH!" I screamed, pointing my finger at him.
Suddenly my heart threatened to leap out of my mouth; he was playing dirty just as he had promised. Noah, at the slightest sign of a threat to his notorious ego, would hurt me again and again, without the least bit of mercy. He was like that and I knew him.
"Enough!"
Chris raised his voice until it cut through the air between us. The tension gave way for a second, but my breathing was still uneven. I restrained myself, gripping my jeans under the table harder.
"That's not going to happen, Noah. Your issues with Briar are yours; sort them out outside the label. That's not our problem, much less the band's. Nothing you've brought here justifies kicking her out. And, honestly, the hiatus served a purpose: Briar had time to clear her head and come back better. If that doesn't affect her performance on stage, there's no reason to continue this discussion. Breaking the contract now would drown us in fines, not to mention the band's copyrights. Before acting with your heart, you need to think with your head."
Noah held his gaze, cold, looking Chris up and down, his voice cutting when he replied.
"If Briar doesn't leave the band, my family pulls the investment. They step down from the shareholders' board."
A laugh escaped me before I could hold it back.
"Shareholders? Since when do they put money in here?" I shot back, incredulous. "What happened to that story about independence? About not depending on your parents' money, about building everything organically? At what point did you sell my band?"
His gaze turned in my direction, hard.
"This band isn't yours, Briar. You abandoned it four months ago and, to be honest, you'd been leaving us in the dirt for more than a year with that mediocre work of yours."
"I was giving everything I had evenβ¦"
"I don't care anymore," he shrugged, as if talking about something trivial. "That's my condition. If Briar doesn't leave, I pull my family from the shareholders' board and I leave the band as soon as we deliver the next album, as it's already set out in my contract."
Chris went quiet, distant, shaking his head, as if refusing to believe what he was hearing. And it made sense. It was too absurd coming from him of all people. From the man who most wanted to see the band succeed, who gave up the most of everything: time, people, sleep, sanity. This dream had always been ours.
The first thing we built together. And yet, he seemed willing to destroy everything that had any connection to me, even if, in the process, he buried along with it what mattered most to him.
The band.
"You're a grown man. If your discomfort working with Briar weighs more than keeping the band alive, then that's between you and yourself." Chris shrugged, firm.
Noah drew in a breath, deep.
"Give me the full tour, all the continents and countries already locked in, the new album and the remaining festivals. If, after all that, your decision stays the same⦠I'm going to be sorry to lose you. But I'll respect it."
Noah alternated his gaze between the two of us before nodding, dry. It was the closest thing to an agreement we were going to reach, if that could even still be called one. In an outburst, he left the room without another single word and, deep down, I was grateful for that, when even the sound of his voice caused me revulsion.
"He has no idea, does he?"
I threw an exhausted look in Chris's direction. His lips curved into a discreet smile, sad, almost without strength.
"Noβ¦" I let a crooked smile escape as I threw myself into the chair, staring at the ceiling as if it could give me some answer. "And if it's up to me, he's going to keep not knowing."
"Because in your head it's fine to carry this on your back, but heβ¦"
"He wouldn't survive it."
A warm tear rolled from my left eye before I could stop it.
"Continuing to let him hate me is the best way to protect him."
Going to the Soturno used to help on the days when the urge to hit something was almost unbearable, even though, unfortunately, that something couldn't be my own head against the wall.
It was one of the few habits I inherited from my father. He used to take me to watch the fights when I was still a child, but, in the end, what kept me most wasn't the blows, it was how much money he lost by betting with emotion where only coldness had any place. Will even had a talent for smaller things: pickpocketing, loading a syringe with synthetic, robbing old people outside the bank on payday. Things that required speed, not intelligence.
Other than that, he was a useless piece of shit.
When he realized how much rage I carried toward him and my pig of a mother, it didn't take long for him to turn that into money. He always found a way: whether by putting me to steal, or throwing me into a filthy ring in the back of some garage, having me beat or be beaten for a few coins. They were always experts at squeezing me to the last drop, at extracting everything I had to offer.
And, deep down, it's not like today is all that different. Even without their shadow behind me.
"Damn, Bri, you're going to kill the girl like that!" Naomi screamed, pulling me off the unconscious body on the floor.
The whistle had already sounded more than fifteen seconds ago, but I was so lost inside my own head that I kept punching, as if there were still something there to unload.
"Rough day?" She asked, handing me a bottle of water. I spat out my mouthguard and turned my back on the girl, who was slowly getting up from the floor, receiving help from the older monitors. Naomi followed me with a towel like a little dog. "Hey, wait."
"Noah."
"Who else would it be?" She rolled her eyes, picking up the clothes I had tossed in the air before stepping into the shower. "Is he still on about that madness of kicking you out of the band?"
"He lied to me, Naomi. Noah sold our band; he put his family on the shareholders' board and I only found out because he had a crisis of elitism when I refused to leave. He used it to humiliate me, to say that the damned band was his!"
"Insufferable."
The cold water fell on my face and all my hair covered my eyes within seconds.
"I'm so angry. Furious. I wanted to smash his face!" I growled, clenching my fists. Hard, I threw another punch at the wall, feeling the bones in my hand throb. "BASTARD."
"It's not like there's much you can do about it, Bri. From what I understand about law, being a shareholder makes him the owner of the band or at least a good part of it." Naomi added, laying my clothes on the counter beside me while I dried off. "I warned you that using that argument of Folio's about copyrights would make him lower the bar even further. Sometimes I think you forgot what Noah is like when someone reduces him to shit."
But this would undoubtedly not stay like this.
If he was turning this into a competition of who could make the other's life more miserable, I was hungry for a counterattack to match.
"I think you need to be very careful, Bri. Pay attention to whose advice you listen to, because even that can be his strategy to find something against you."
"I'll take care of myself, I promise." I assured, forcing a smile. After putting on the clean clothes, I ruffled my wet hair in front of the mirror and grabbed my toiletries scattered around the sink.
We left the locker room laughing after Naomi nearly got tangled in the cords on the floor and took a fall. Apparently, the gym was in its final touches before reopening. What had once been a dirty, damp hole with a ring now at least had decent lighting.
"Hey, girls?" The male voice interrupted our steps; we turned right away to confirm where it was coming from. "A few more minutes and I wouldn't have managed to catch you here. Aren't you staying for Norris's fight?"
"We already know who's going to win anyway." I rolled my eyes.
"Still not losing that arrogance, Bri⦠but you really do have a good nose for bets."
Naomi and I looked at each other before opening an awkward smile at Mason Knightley. He was still shirtless with the bandages from the previous fight. It was always a surprise to figure out how I should treat him on the day I ran into him, since I never knew what his situation with my best friend was.
"Mason, how are you?" I said amiably. "It really has been a while since we saw each other."
"You really were MIA, Bri." He laughed, fiddling with the bandages. "But even Naomi I've been seeing less, it seems like she's been avoiding me."
From the corner of my eye, I saw my friend clench her jaw.
"This isn't the place to talk about that, Mass." Naomi said quietly.
The big guy nodded and opened a half smile.
"You're right, but we can catch up on old times tonight, can't we? I'm throwing a party at my place, it's something simple, a roommate's birthday. You two should come⦠especially you, Naomi." Mason winked.
"Yeahβ¦" she said without enthusiasm. "Maybe Bri and I will show up."
Me?
My brow immediately furrowed and I turned to her.
"I knew I could count on the best duo at LA parties! It's going to be fucking great!" He said excitedly as he finally left us alone, giving my shoulder a slap. "See you there, Bri."
Before getting into the car, I stopped at the passenger door. Naomi noticed I was standing like a statue, face closed and arms crossed; she knew what that meant.
I was so angry I could scream at her right now.
"Have you lost your mind, Naomi?" I asked, confused, hands raised. "You can see I'm busting my ass to show I'm sober and you're going to put me in that guy's party?" Did you forget who Mason is?"
"Nothing that bad is going to happen, okay?" She shot back. "I just don't want to be in the same place as Mass alone; we're not together anymore."
"How many hours ago did you break up? Because you two break up and get back together several times a day. If you don't want to be alone with him, why didn't you just say you didn't want to go to the party?"
"You know what he's like, Briβ¦" Naomi shook her head as if that softened the situation.
"But what does that have to do with me?"
Naomi suddenly opened her eyes in an exaggerated way, as if I had said the biggest absurdity she needed to digest.
"Briar, you're so selfish⦠you're saying it as if going to the damn party, keeping quiet for a few hours and having a few drinks were some enormous sacrifice for you! It's not like you've never done that before."
"Naomi, this is, without a doubt, a sacrifice for me," I raised my voice. "I'M A GODDAMN ADDICT!"
She took a deep breath and opened her long-lashed eyes again. Naomi was so furious her pale skin was red as embers.
"If you can't control yourself for a few hours, maybe it's best you go back to rehab, Briar."
Just like that.
For an instant she looked more like Noah after saying that and getting into the car, leaving me alone in the parking lot, than like my childhood best friend.
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