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CHAPTER 24, or was my tolerance a phase?
Phoebe counted her breaths slowly, inhaling on the even numbers, exhaling on the odd ones. 34, 35, 36... Her head was spinning while her mind raged, and the outside noise seemed to grow louder and louder. The car was speeding, and she couldn't even see where they were going.
They were already back in Des Moines; the last three shows had been canceled for "family reasons" and the band was announcing their apologies through the state's radio stations where they would play their final shows.
— You know what? Fuck you, Joey — the words still lingered on Phoebe's tongue, as she cried more uncontrollably by the minute.
The lights were just blurs racing past the car windows; everything was so confusing, so heavy, that she felt like she was losing her breath. Until a calloused and heavy hand squeezed her shoulder.
— PHOEBE, FUCK! — Corey shouted, his eyes almost popping out of his skull. — ANSWER ME, FUCKING HELL! DON'T FAINT NOW! — He slammed his hand on the steering wheel after running the third consecutive red light.
— JUST GET TO THE DAMN HOSPITAL, MOTHERFUCKER! — Phoebe shouted back at the vocalist, rudely shoving his hand off her shoulder. She curled up in the passenger seat as the men crammed in the backseat grumbled with the sharp turn Corey had made, squashing them into the small space.
Maybe things were just going well, too well; maybe she deserved all of this.
Maybe God's tolerance for Phoebe's happiness was just a phase.
Of course! The tour was almost over, it had been a little over a year since they'd been traveling around, doing their shows, pretending to be famous, pretending to be happy. At some point, the bill would come due, karma — or divine punishment, call it what you will — always comes, always comes.
Slowly, Phoebe felt herself rotting inside, as if the sludge she had eaten at the start of the tour, right after breaking up with Luke, had finally lodged itself in her entire body and was consuming her organs so quickly that the only hours she had left to live were being spent in that car, racing towards the hospital.
That would explain the strange feeling she'd had in her body since the start of the day.
Stamped on a newspaper from that morning (or the previous one? Time was a blur, just like the lights outside her window) was the all-too-familiar mask of her band's drummer. They were leaving the hotel, carrying their luggage on a cart to the back of that damn tour bus. Phoebe couldn't read the headline; the newspaper was folded and thrown on top of her bags, but still, she opened her lips to announce to Nathan that he was in the paper.
— Superball? In the newspaper? — Corey asked after finishing loading his luggage into the bus compartment, walking around Phoebe's cart to grab the paper. It was her turn to stow her bags. — No fucking way! — Corey laughed and tapped the paper when he saw their drummer's face printed on it.
