Split Ends

Chapter One

She was chaos personified. Just a mess in the club, in a way that made you stare at her in awe. In a way that made me stare at her in awe. Her blonde hair scrunched up around her face, decorated with smudged eyeliner and red lips lazily smiling as she did another line off of her table across the room from mine. Sydney Star in the flesh was more of a hurricane than the tabloids gave her credit for.

Her eyes caught mine across the room and she winked before turning her attention to somebody speaking on her table. After more exchanged glances throughout the night I began to push my way through the crowds over to her. I was going to take her home tonight, that was for sure.

"Harry!"

Fucks sake.

Nate Westman. Flame's manager. shouts at me even though he's right fucking next to me.

"Bloody hell Nate, I already can't see shit, don't deafen me as well."

He swings his arm around my shoulder, "that's on you mate, how much shit have you taken?"

I raise my arms in mock innocence with a smirk on my face.

"Don't play around with me. The label have said you're on your last warning with all these headlines. They know you guys have an edgy look but they don't want to be seen as advocates for coke and molly. Yeah?"

I glance over again to Sydney's table. But she's gone. Running my hand down my face in annoyance I look over to my own table and see the guys, the other members of Flame, each as fucked up as me.

"Hey," he pulls what little attention I have left back to his pissed face. "Your contract also reads that you need a new song recorded by the end of the week."

"Could you not have said this in a text Nate? Why you gotta stalk me here."

"I didn't stalk you Harry. You were photographed outside here a couple of hours ago. I thought you looked out of your mind then, but fucking hell man you gotta get your shit together."

He gives me a talking to pretty much every week. And I give him a song and a show and he's happy. But he's pissed tonight and the look on his face tells me he's serious about calling it quits this time.

"Alright, just call me in the morning and we can talk then. Let me just enjoy the rest of my nigh for fucks sake."

"It's 6am Harry," he lets out an ingenuine laugh. "I mean the afterparty after the Brits afterparty, get it together."

Nate calls me later in the day as promised and he cuts me a deal. An album out by the end of the year and to be done with the drugs for good.

I know, I know, I'm 22 for Christ's sake. The boring shit is for later. But when he tells me he has a list of eager replacements for me, I know he wouldn't fuck about. Yeah, Flame's big and I could make it on my own however the label has the power to ruin what's left of my reputation for not keeping my end of the contract and then no fucking label will have me.

Plus, my mum's worried about what she's reading in the tabloids about all the dope and shit. And there's only so long I can keep telling her that it's all lies. She doesn't deserve that.

A couple of days later the guys and I are at the studio so I can run my plans for this new album past them.

"Hold on, you're going clean?" Tyler questions from beside me on the couch, a dimly lit cigarette hanging from his lips.

"The whole reason I started this band was for the music and the shows Ty, if I'm too drugged up to even sing the couple of songs we have then we're not going anywhere."

Archer, our bassist, gives his opinion, "I respect it, H. But there's no way you're going to stick to this agreement."

The two of them laugh as Rocky joins us in the studio, a cigarette perched on his lips too.

"How're my boys holding up?"

I roll my eyes as he walks in late like he fucking owns the place. And us for that matter.

The guys all exchange laughs and hellos, and I sit there not breaking my hard stare because I'm pissed and jealous that they're not being held to the same standards as me. Maybe its because they never took it as far as I did, I don't know.

"Harry's up his arse about getting the next album out." Archer explains to Rocky.

"Tell me what I gotta play and I'll play it."

Archer has never been too hung up on lyrics, that's just the way he is, but over the past year all of us have lost sight of what we wanted in the first place. So, if I have to do this shit and actually work, they have got to as well.

"Well, Ty and Arch have already recorded theirs so listen to it and play your part."

We always worked like this, I wrote the sheet music for the guitars and bass and let Rocky work his magic. I trusted him.

"I won't hesitate to correct you though, don't you forget," I smirk and point my finger in his face.

"I couldn't ever, Styles." He puts his cigarette out in the ashtray on the table in front of me.

"Hey, don't tempt him man," the other two start laughing. I smrik at them before lighting up my own cigarette.

"Don't worry, there's no way I could go a day without a smoke."

"They'll kill you too, you know." Archer lights up his own.

"Touché."

After a few hours of re-running the song, we create Sour Diesel. And it's everything she is.

"One more time!" I shout from the recording booth.

"Run it."

Archer's bass fills the room as the song starts.

"Walks in the place, hands on her waist." Eyes closed I start singing into the mic, thinking of her blue eyes across a darkened room. "Gun on her thigh, big shooter game."

And the rest of our year goes just like that.