The Grey- Noah Sebastian

twenty eight

*Noah's POV*

We were finally beginning to gain some more traction and we were just signed to another tour for the spring! I'm really excited because we were asked to co-headline on a tour with the Amity Affliction and Senses Fail. We've been fans of them for years.

It doesn't start for a while, so we're still working on writing the album and putting the final details on it. We didn't meet our deadline for the album to be out by winter. It actually isn't even coming out until next year. We put out Careful What You Wish For and The Hell I Overcame as singles, but we have no idea when the album will be done; it feels no where close to finished.

I was working on recording Running in Circles and noticed that my manager was calling mid record. I stepped out of the vocal booth and answered. "Hey! What's up?" I asked timidly; he never calls.

"Hey, uh, are you with the rest of the band?" He asked.

"Yeah, except for Nic, do you want me to throw you on speaker?"

"Yes, please." I put him on speaker and told the guys to come closer. "So, as you know, the tour announcement happened today..." he trailed off.

"Yes, and?" I urged.

"Have you seen it yet?" He asked timidly.

"No, we've been in the studio all day, why?" He was annoying me at this point. Just get to it.

"It appears our contract was not honored," he said morosely.

"In what way?" My blood was running cold.

"It appears that you guys are openers..." I went through and found the Amity Affliction's Twitter post and sure enough, we were fucking openers.

"What the fuck?!" I screamed, showing everyone the flier. "Do you have our contract handy?"

"Yes, and it looks like they breeched it, whether it was on purpose or not," he added. "I'm going to give you some options. We can civilly handle it behind closed doors and try to adjust things or we can go ahead and pull out."

I ran my hand over my face. "Do everything you can, I can only imagine the kickback if we pull out." He hung up and I looked at the guys, bewildered. "We're about to be dead meat." I was so stumped. How did this get fucked up so bad? I felt like I could explode. I went into the vocal booth and just started recording growls, knowing I could use them somewhere. I hung on to the phrase "dead meat," feeling it. Feeling stomped on, feeling betrayed, feeling small. I just started testing how long I could go with my growls and screams, wanting to channel this feeling into something.

I went until my throat hurt. By the time I got out, I had so many emails and texts from my manager that it made my head spin. They weren't honoring our requests, and we needed to make a decision. They were being really disrespectful to us, too.

"So... I just have a feeling that we should pull out," I proposed to the guys.

"What? Why?" Jolly pressed.

"Their teams are being really disrespectful to ours, I think it's a good move to not get involved further if they're going to be like this."

"But we hate being involved in drama and press," Jolly whined.

"I know, but we're going to be miserable if we go at this point," I posed, him and Folio nodding. I called our manager back. "Hey," I started after he answered. "Pull us out. If they're being disrespectful now, then it's only going to get worse."

"Agreed, will do," he said before hanging up. I let out the breath that I was holding and sat down, knowing that this wasn't going to be easy.

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